


Heart Tartare

by gul



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Light Bondage, M/M, Oral Sex, loudly implied cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gul/pseuds/gul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you going to eat my heart?" Will said, nonsensically, perhaps thinking of the previous crime they examined but perhaps foreseeing a future one.</p><p>Lecter raised his head. "Yes," he said.</p><p>Later, Clarice can taste it on his lips. She decides she wants to meet the man for herself.</p><p>Update: Memory palaces.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kinkmeme fill that Turned Into A Very Long Thing.

I.I

The silver of the knife glints off the deep wine-red of the heart as he butchers it, slicing off the fat and sinew and separating the compartments with practiced strokes. The bitter copper smell of blood has overtaken that of the deep red wine.

Hannibal Lecter does not often eat raw heart, if he does not experience a particular craving. He finds so very few that he feels like tasting.

Heart tartare. He likes the English; he likes hearing the words in certain mouths. The tapping of tongue and lush retroflexes, like the heart’s own beat and burst of blood.

(Although both of them, both Will and Clarice, are embarrassed of the way they speak, he loves their luxuriant, unstudied American accents. Like they are talking around marbles and water. Like they have cut their precious tongues.)

At this moment, the only sounds are the soft sharp chops of his knife and the glop of meat and blood. His own breathing.

It has taken him much practice to prepare the dish to his satisfaction, without ruining it.

The greatest trick is preparing it while the heart’s owner still lives. To chop it up and consume it while they still breathe.

He has tried twice.

He has succeeded once.

I.II

“I want you to meet someone,” they had said.

When he had first laid eyes on Will Graham, he knew he must have his heart. Will was one of the most beautiful things Lecter had ever seen in his life. 

Will had risen to shake Hannibal’s hand as he entered the office, as Jack Crawford introduced them. Uncomfortable and suspicious, Will had stared somewhere below the taller man's left cheekbone as he muttered a perfunctory “pleased to meet you.” 

Hannibal had smiled, taking the opportunity to look the young man over. Even under the sickly yellow light of the office and the backdrop of grinning dead girls and the red ribbons of what was left of their bodies, Will was pleasing to look at. Especially under, perhaps--an excellent frame. Hannibal was a man who believed presentation was almost as important as content.

Will was handsome and lithe underneath the rumpled clothes and glasses, beneath his drawn-in wary stance and jerky avoidance of eye contact. His intelligence simmered in his cast-down light eyes, in his crackled drawled words, his lovely mobile mouth, his accidental over-emoting. So open to everything and thus trying to let nothing in. 

In his head such chaos and violence, and poor Will huddled in a corner almost defenseless in his own head. And yet, Hannibal thought, as he casually glanced over the wall of girls (so pedestrian, so compulsive, the result of grimy need) he immersed himself in these heads to save others that he wouldn’t be able to look in the eye.

A walking St. Sebastian, heart pierced a hundred times over, leaking blood trails.

Perception, as he told Will, was a tool pointed at both ends. Lecter couldn’t help himself; a rare occurrence. 

He had to taste this one. He used his perception like a scalpel raked over a ribcage, straight into soft flesh.  
“I imagine,” he said to Will, his voice low and soothing, calm and offhand, “that what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations; appalled by your dreams. No forts in the bone arena of your skull for the things you love.”

The blow hit. He saw it in the fear and anger flare in those lovely blue-green eyes. He had pierced in; he had laid Will’s perfect little heart open and beating.

“Whose profile are you working on?” he scowled. When Will was uncomfortable, Hannibal noted, there was always a hum, an almost latent hysteria to his words. His voice would pitch high; he’d drawl his sarcasm. Always challenging. Putting up hurdles even in his voice. He turned to Jack. “Whose profile is he working on?”

Hannibal preempted Jack. (If Jack thought he could keep such a delicious thing to himself, he was wrong.) “I’m sorry, Will. Observing is what we do,” he said. “I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off.”

Will was endearingly, maddeningly petulant. Hannibal would never quite break him of the trait; he’d never quite try.

Later, he brought Will breakfast in a motel room in Minnesota. Will answered the door. He was even more beautiful when he just woke, bleary, badly sunlit, before he had remembered to throw all his defenses up.

The motel was cheap and it was chosen for its proximity to the crime scene. The decor skewed sulfur yellow, a permutation of the early sunlight that was the only illumination in the room. Stale cigarette stink hung in the air, not quite chased away by the tannic swirl of fine fresh coffee or the hot eggs and sausage. 

Hannibal watched Will eat, the sun on one side of his face. They spoke briefly of the case. Of Jack and the FBI. Hannibal gently teased him, saying how fragile the FBI must see him. A treasured little teacup.

When Will smiled it was as if something had seized him. Overtaken him. It was how a child smiled, in spite of itself, with little control.

“How do you see me?” Will asked. He said it casually, but there was a curl of hunger to his voice. He looked Hannibal in the eye.

Hannibal smiled.

For his Will (he had never been anything to Hannibal but Hannibal’s Will) he had strangled a young woman and pinioned her on antlers. He thought of Will’s face as he drove the antlers through the stubborn white flesh. He also thought of dinner, and wine pairings.

Even after eating her lungs, he went to bed unsatisfied.

I.III

They were both used to being vulnerable and being seen as vulnerable. Will adapted his vulnerability; if he was to be a target the least he could do was avoid the arrows while still proving useful. Clarice weaponized hers.

Even as hunter, Will had been prey. Even as prey, Clarice was hunter.

But it had been too late for both of them the moment he saw them.

He himself was white teeth under still black water; a silver hunting knife in the snow-white night.

I.IV

“Someone wants to meet you,” they had said.

When he first laid eyes on Clarice Starling, he was standing in his cold blue cell in his cold blue clothes. The chill of the porcelain and chrome fixtures reflected off the glass. It had been years since he had seen sunlight.

(It had been years since he had seen Will.)

She had clipped in on cheap pumps, ill-dressed, but not from lack of taste. She did, he had to concede, have a little taste. It was impractical to spend one’s student income on clothing, and it could be impractical to look too lovely when one worked in such a thuggish and alpha-male-skewed field as law enforcement.

(Neither Will nor Clarice really knew how to dress themselves, although Clarice at least mastered the fundamentals. This did not concern him. He greatly preferred them in clothes he had chosen himself, or undressed, and on his bed. His, either way. Either one.)

In spite of her clothes, which obscured her figure through their cheap material and large size, she was beautiful. So, so very beautiful. Her body was soft, but muscled; a girl with a natural good figure who ran too much. 

He would love, he thought, to watch her run. From him. To him.

It had been so long since he had seen such beauty and he was so hungry. He unabashedly took in the curve of her breast and hips, her clear pale skin, her dark blue eyes, her soft lips pressed close together. A tedious earnestness to her, perhaps, but also a brilliance, and a hunger.

And heart.

People came to him every so often; they were banal and rude and repulsive in their need, in their fear. Starling was different. She was cold water in a silver basin. She was a pulsing hungry heart under perfect skin and Evian skin cream. So much to pull apart, to test and taste.

She greeted him politely, with a smile, and sat down on the cheap folding chair. Her voice and movements echoed in the spare hallway, against the background churning of infection that were his fellow prisoners. Unlike his other visitors, she did not gape at him.

In fact his Starling was not there on his account but on Jack’s. He had sent her there ostensibly to have him fill out a questionnaire. A crude subterfuge on Jack's part, but Starling believed it. He imagined she trusted Jack a very great deal. Jack wanted his help on Buffalo Bill; he sent a little starling instead of himself. No, the little bird was not overly interested in Lecter at all.

(She would be.)

He did sense some slight fear—this was only reasonable. But she had learned long ago not to cower. And after all, she did not believe he was the worst thing that could happen to her. The press would only call him that later, when they spoke of her. 

Starling did well at first, perhaps because she had little actual interest in him. But she was young, and earnest, and quickly stumbled. He leapt. He drove in his knife.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you,” he had smiled, he had purred, and he told her the worst of what he saw. He laid her little heart bare, perfect scented skin pulled back.

The way razor cuts work: there is a sharp gasp of a stroke—you feel the pressure, the opening of the skin, the lurch of anticipation before the bloom of pain and blood. 

The pain bloomed. She smiled, tightly, and blinked. She was hurting. She was beautiful. “You see a lot, Dr. Lecter. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don't you—why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Maybe you're afraid to.”

But her eyes were wet, and Hannibal couldn’t help but lick his lips.

What had Jack been thinking, sending such a tender thing? Jack could see far but never saw enough. Jack didn’t see the dark god lurching at the back of Starling’s head—her dead father, through his absence forever withholding the love and approval and acceptance she would struggle for at the FBI.

Jack had sent her to him as both bait and a taunt. He knew Lecter, deprived of the feast that was William, would be so hungry. And so he dangled this sweet thing, tougher than Jack knew, in front of him. Perhaps he wanted to resolve the trauma of Miriam and Will through safe repetition: surely, Jack would tell himself, surely this one would be safe. Lecter was behind glass and couldn’t devour any more of his protégés. His children.

Jack hadn’t figured out that Hannibal only physically ate the ones who had nothing better to offer the world than their flesh. Clarice and Will were much more complicated and nourishing meals.

Lecter saw. And remembered.

At first he refused to help her. She was bait, a taunt, a searing reminder of all the meals he could never have--and would be treated as such. But as she was walking away he heard her soft gasp; he smelled the sharpness of semen and her flush of horror. (Miggs, next door, abusing his broken little bird.) 

Lecter cried out for her to return.

She ran back over (he decided he liked her running TO him), close, too flustered to remember she was supposed to be frightened of him. Were it not for the chill glass he could have reached out to take her by the waist, the hand, the throat. (Her wary trusting look reminded him of Will; that old pain scraped briefly under his ribs.)

“Do this case file for me,” she pleaded.

“No,” he had said, “but I’ll give you what you’re most hungry for.”

“What’s that?”

“Advancement, of course.” (Recognition. To be seen for who she was. Yes, Lecter could give her that.)

The triumph and delight in her blue eyes was worth a year of incarceration.

A few hours later he talked Miggs into swallowing his own tongue. He went to bed hungry, as always, but that night (and every night after, for so long, for every day he didn’t see her) more so than usual.

I.V

Not a single drop of blood has dribbled on his chef’s whites, on his long sinewed forearms. With a neat slide of the knife, he slips the chopped offal to the side of the cutting board.

On the smooth pale wood, the dark heart lies open; waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Retroactively beta-ed by tumblr's tiredteaspoons, who is a brilliant god among humans.


	2. First Taste Part I: Will

II.I

Night outside; there are no stars. Lecter prepares the heart tartare in the starkly appointed kitchen.

After the heart is open and separated, he trims it down to its palatable parts. Lecter’s long blunt fingers work in practiced tandem with the gleaming wet knife as he cuts off fat and grey fibrous skin, paring the heart down. He aims the blade up as he runs the knife over the meat, gently and with purpose.

For tartare especially this step is important; one does not want any unpleasant textures getting in the way of the tender meat.

The tang of blood still hangs in the air under the wine. The wood cutting board is wet with it. Outside is only darkness and cool night air; the yellow lights of the kitchen mean that he sees only his own reflection in the windows.

He has tested this heart before choosing it; there were still refinements to be made, as with living hearts.

He has certainly tested his Will and his Clarice. He pitches them against monsters and they return to him like dogs, like homing pigeons. For comfort. For approval.

With an elegant swiftness, he sweeps the heart cuttings away to dispose of later.

II.II

Will Graham was used to others wanting his mind; Hannibal would watch Will’s tense mouth and listen to his petulant jabs as those others tried to stickily fumble in his head. They’d demand to “borrow” and “use” him and mostly Will would acquiesce.

Lecter did not blame their desire. Will Graham was tantalizing. Lecter had never before encountered a man like Will—he would find himself, in the inevitable lull of a busy day, often giving serious thought to tying Will to a chair (or bed), and watching the ligaments strain livid on beautiful Will’s muscled arms, and never letting him go until he had tasted every part of him—head and heart and body. He did not share these thoughts. Lecter did, however, start resenting others’ interest.

Will Graham was his.

The trick with Will would be not to just gain access to his lovely mind but also his lovely body, which Will kept to himself.

As it was, Hannibal couldn’t believe his good fortune when Will Graham sat in the chair across him and gave Hannibal almost full access to his head. Will would come over steadily for “conversations.” The two men would sit or stand (Will might pace) in Hannibal’s lush office, all appointed in deep bruise-blues and blood-reds and cream, and Will would open his mind up and let Hannibal in.

Tell me, Lecter would say, lapping up anything Will spilled out in response. Tell me about your mother. Tell me about your childhood, your nightmares. Tell me of all the terrible things you see, of stabbing girls in their sleep, of scooping men’s eyes out as they scream. Tell me (let me taste) how you feel when the hot arterial gushes go chill and sticky on your hands, and when under your fingers their heartbeat ebbs like a dream on waking.

“Tell me,” Hannibal would command Will, “how does that make you feel.”

And Will would obey.

These exercises sometimes distressed Will; he would remove his glasses and bury his boyish face and dark curls in his hands. He thought his wonderful abilities meant there was something wrong with him. Will was not so unlike Hannibal; he tasted others’ hearts.

Where Will was indiscriminate in this tasting, Hannibal was exacting. The doctor did not have much use for most other people’s thoughts or desires, even if he had as firm a grasp on them as Will did. Unlike Will, who obediently ate up everything given him, Hannibal was a connoisseur, and that included of hearts.

He only wanted Will’s. He only wanted Will.

They would talk in his office, mostly. Lecter, broad and lean, his clothes and stance perfectly assembled, would lean back in his chair as he watched his Will tremble and quake and sneer, and pour out sickness and love sweeter than wine. Watching him, devouring his words, Hannibal felt hunger lance through his whole body for his brave dark lovely boy, as he goaded him further.

“It’s just,” Will would often say, almost choke, curled into himself in his terrible earth-tone clothes, twisting out his words through twisted lips, “I want…sometimes, I want…” And he would tell Hannibal all the terrible things he sometimes wanted.

Hannibal had a proclivity for distilling content and repeating it back out loud to the subject, so close to the truth that the subject believed it, and thus it became truth.

“You always keep yourself from what you think you should want,” Hannibal said, lacing his fingers over his long crossed legs. “Don’t you?”

Will blinked, blue eyes bright behind his glasses. “What I want,” he said, overemphasizing his words, petulant, “is terrifying.”

“Not always. But, still, you frighten yourself with the intensity of your desire.” Lecter’s voice, he knew, was dark and low and comforting--when he wished it to be.

“I don’t know what’s me...and what isn’t,” Will admitted. He leaned back, mirroring Lecter.

“Yes you do,” Hannibal replied. He was rarely so direct; direct confrontation was for the starved and desperate. But he was so hungry. “And that’s what frightens you.”

Will was silent for a moment. Perhaps without knowing, his eyes glanced over Lecter’s body, back up to meet his dark and odd-colored eyes. He swallowed, and nodded.

The doctor actively kept himself from smiling. He thought he might be sated eventually from Will; he never was. Every interaction only sharpened his hunger for Will’s beautiful, tender heart. He wanted all of it.

—

Lecter was enchanted by how Will made him feel; the rarified hungers and desires the young man evoked. A sensualist, Hannibal savored the pain of desire as much as he would its eventual fulfillment.

When Will was called away on business, Hannibal did not exactly offer to feed his dogs but he turned the conversation enough on its side that Will would mistake Hannibal’s desires for his own, and ask. Once again, Lecter could not believe his good fortune. He was being invited into places he would have had to insinuate himself into otherwise—or even take by force, if necessary, although it rarely was.

The first time Hannibal was in Will’s house alone, he explored. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Will seemed firmly determined to recreate his entrenched American middle-class aesthetics of comfort and thick warm textures. Will had built his own little fort, filled with dogs and blankets and too many cotton shirts to sweat through. The sun spilled in.

In the corner, a fly-tying station caught Hannibal’s eye. A half-formed piece of bait pinned on metal for construction. Lecter examined Will’s handiwork—predictably Will, of course, earnest and overthought and strangely timid.

Hannibal treated Will’s possessions as he treated Will, adding his own precise flourish—a large feather, red and black and arching.

He punctured his thumb with the hook, sucking thoughtfully at the welling blood and the pooled pain.

Delicious, as always.

\--

Lecter touched Will rarely, almost always perfunctorily. One of the first and one of his favorites was when he walked through the kitchen arch of the Hobbs home to see Will frantically clutching and pawing at Abigail Hobbs’s lovely pale slashed throat. He quaked and shivered with every arterial spurt; the late-afternoon sun and blood blinding him.

Hannibal gently, firmly took Will’s shaking hands and removed them as he (Just a brush of fingers, really, and yet.) Will allowed it, welcomed it, shaking so hard he felt his whole body hum—looking desperately at Hannibal, cool and still and covered in blood and sun, who looked back with private delight.

(And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? he will ask. Do we seek out things to covet?)

(No.)

(We being to covet what we see every day.)

Hannibal’s only weakness in controlling his expression was when something surprising delighted him: he would grow strangely placid, his eyes narrowing and sharpening as the new sensation washed over him and he tasted it. Often his lip would twitch or quirk.

Will Graham saw the weakness there, kneeling in panic and red and late spilled sunlight, as Lecter saved the girl’s life while driving the first hook into Will’s own heart.

He didn’t process it, then. He didn’t link it to all the times Hannibal pushed him too hard or alienated him from his colleagues or otherwise cut him open and apart, making himself the only one Will trusted his heart to.

He would realize it, later.

Too late.

—

Will had already set the precedent of driving through snow and rain and good manners to consult Hannibal about anything from cases to ill-timed kisses. Soon, he began dropping by unannounced at Lecter's office, at his appointment times on days that he had no appointments on. At first Hannibal would have to pretend he didn’t hear and smell him pacing around the waiting room. Eventually, he would knock, terse and soft, his heart-rate elevated. 

Finally, Hannibal just left his door open every night a little before half-past seven.

These visits grew more frequent after Hannibal had been attacked by Tobias. Or, after Will had seen him as broken and bloody and vulnerable as the young man himself often felt. Hannibal had allowed Graham to see joy and relief on his face as he regarded his friend: one more hook in the heart. 

Hannibal preferred working late to early; every Tuesday and Thursday morning he would reserve for catching up on office matters. Will showing up mid-morning one Tuesday, tense and hopeful, was a welcome distraction. 

Hannibal sat him down. “Most pleased to see you. But, your classes are not being neglected?” he asked.

“Jack has a new case,” Will said, his despair twitching out in microexpressions as he tried to smile. “West Virginia. Pretty—ah, well, pretty gruesome, they’re telling me. But isn’t it always. Are you coming? Do you want to come?”

It was all Lecter could do to keep from leaning in to lick Will’s lips as they twitch and swallowed his voice as it broke.

“I don’t know if Jack likes me there,” he said, instead.

“Yeah, but…do you want to come? Are you coming?” Will’s voice pitched up.

“Yes,” Hannibal said.

—

It took several terse hours to make their way to the copse in the West Virginian woods. Lecter listened to and luxuriated in the West Virginian accents like sticky sun-warm honey as they travelled into the rural area, populated by coal miners and coal miner’s daughters. 

Will was unusually quiet as they trudged through the gold and fallen leaves to join the team at the body, the twitter of birds and the scent of the rich dead earth preoccupying them as they approached what the killer had left.

She (the victim) was found on a makeshift shrine of piled dingy mattresses and stone, with her heart carved out and her throat ripped from her neck.. The Aztec iconography was an afterthought, a pretension—this was mostly about sex, and a perversion of love and worship as death and consumption. The blood had soaked into the top mattress into a hard black rotten stain like the snarl of her black hair. Her hands were tied behind her back. The killer had ripped her throat out with his teeth as he had fucked her; when she was almost dead from loss of blood he had hacked out her heart with a stone knife.

And poorly, Lecter noted, but kept the thought to himself.

She was the third young woman found like this. Lecter himself got exactly the same pleasure from devouring men as women. He recognized most humans lacked his perspective.

“All right,” Jack said, broad and clever and commanding. “Everyone back off for a bit. Let Mr. Graham take a look.”

Jack, everyone knew, would drive Will until Will broke completely. (There were lives at stake, after all.)

Hannibal would not forgive Jack for attempting to take that pleasure for his own. He made to leave with the rest of the investigators, making sure Will saw him.

“No,” Will said, a little too loudly. “No,” he repeated. “You can stay, Dr. Lecter. Stay here.” Underneath Will’s scruff and muscle was the open sweet face of a child; that said, he was commanding when he forgot to be anxious.

Hannibal smirked at Jack, and at Jack’s palpable regret of introducing Hannibal and Will. Jack saw him, and did not react, except to dangle Clarice in front of him some years later.

The team retreated some way into the yellow leaves, bloody with sunset.

Hannibal held back to watch Will work—to watch the play of emotions and desire wreck Will’s body. Will Graham leaned over the body, head close to throat, to heart. His slim strong hands hovered fitfully over the woman’s body as Hannibal watched Will’s face darken with lust.

The agonies Will suffered were exquisite. And how he suffered, his Will. Pierced through the heart by someone else’s desire, chopped up and reconstituted, like fine tartare. It was beautiful, Hannibal thought.

“I want her,” Will murmured, “I want all of her,” he said, leaning over the hollow girl, leaning his open panting mouth closer and closer to the gaping chest. Hannibal could smell the desire on him now, his blood pounding, pressing lower, pressing urgent.

Hannibal’s own body echoed; still, he imagined Will would not want to contaminate a crime scene.

“Will,” he said, sharply, putting out a hand to where Will’s neck met his shoulder. His fingers grazed Will’s cheek. "Stop. It is all right."

Will gasped and leant into Hannibal’s touch, pulling him out and down of his murderous mindset, before he realized the touch was Lecter. Even after he did, it still took a moment to disengage.  
The touch stuck in the young man’s heart like fishhooks.

It was nightfall when they left. Will didn't touch Hannibal, but walked close enough that occasionally their shoulders and arms brushed.

Now, under stars, the leaves were black and silver.

Will Graham lived always in a nighttime world. So did Hannibal Lecter.

They were different worlds.

But some of their stars were the same.

—

Will burst into Hannibal’s office the very morning after Hannibal had returned to Baltimore. Whatever had passed between the two men above the heartless girl had frightened Will; Hannibal had cut up his life so that he was the only one Will could turn to about anything, including himself.

So Will turned to him, about him.

Hannibal stood near his desk, taking the uncertainty and abuse Will doled out. Today he was dressed in storm-grays and ice, sharp and sleek; a contrast to Will’s ill-fitting earth and grass tones. Will paced.

“I just don’t understand. And that is not something that happens to me very often, believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t placate me. Back to, okay. I feel like…I feel like I’ve just given you so much. In our conversations. In—“ He turned to face Lecter, grinning his sassy toothy little grin he sometimes bestowed when he was feeling both desperate and confrontational. “What do you get out of this, anyway? I’m not really your patient. You could consult on the cases without talking to me. But you still persist. And it’s not quite friendship though, is it, you hardly tell me anything about yourself. Do you—“ he tilted his head, over-emoted his disbelief—“do you get anything out of this?”

Lecter made a face as if Will has made a tremendous faux-pas. “Will. This is hardly quid pro quo—“

“Yes or no.”

“Hmm. Well,” Lecter tilted his head, as if he is considering the question for the first time. “I receive the pleasure of your excellent company, I suppose.”

“That’s not—“ Will's smile seized him again, but it is defensive. “That’s not an answer, I--”

“But you know the answer, don’t you, Will?” Lecter said, cutting him off, and he let his wide shallow lip curl. “You construct forts you don’t need to construct, and this leads to asking questions you already know the answer to. Less-than-exemplary detective work.”

The point sunk; Will looked mock-offended and clutched his heart before his real indignation took over. “Less-than-exemplary, huh. Don’t think I don’t see you,” Will said, almost hissing, approaching Lecter, who sneered. “Don’t think just because you are opaque and cultured and clever that I can’t—“

“You frighten yourself, don’t you, Will?” Hannibal's smile showed teeth, his eyes narrowed.

Will shuddered out a laugh. “Oh, I frighten everyone,” he said, before he heartbreakingly recalled himself first eating breakfast with Hannibal--wanting to know how Hannibal thought of him. “Don’t I—don’t I frighten you?”

“No.”

“No,” Will repeated, unconsciously echoing Hannibal’s clipped voice, lack of diphthongs. “No, of course not.” He returned to his own voice. “You—I don’t—what have you done.” He ran his hands through his dark mop of hair, and laughed, desperate.

“Will—“ Hannibal stepped closer, reaching out a hand.

Will snarled, and tried to push him away.

But Hannibal was quicker and more graceful than Will counted on, and Hannibal grabbed his wrist. The taller man pushed into the nerves and Will cried out—for a moment Lecter’s face shifted, into something animal, something ravenous. But then it flickered back into the calm brilliant face Will knew, as he laced his fingers through Will’s and put his other hand on his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Lecter lied.

“What do you want from me,” Will asked. He meant it to be cruel; it came out a plea. “Tell me. Tell me.”

Lecter leaned in slightly. His gaze was red and cruel.

Will knew, of course. He had always known; he had known forever, as he had always known Lecter’s true nature, lurching like a dark horned god in the back of his head. He also knew that it was always coming to this.

His next next actions are as inevitable as the next victim’s death, and the next, and the next.

The young man was seized, pulled along by hooks of lust and fear pinned deep and bloody in his heart. He felt everything so intensely, so completely; he leaned into and up to (he had never leaned into, never up to another man, even if it were only a few inches) and pressed his lips to Lecter’s. His kiss was close-mouthed, too hard, pressing tooth and lip against the same as his hands flew up and grabbed at clothes: the fumblings of a much younger man. Lecter parted his own lips slightly; they were exactly as strong and defined and delicious as Will imagined. When they closed to take his own mouth, Will heard himself whimper.

Lecter moved even faster than before, seizing Will’s face, looping his long lean hand through Will’s dark curls, holding him immobile as he deepened and took control of the kiss. He urged open Will’s mouth to taste his tongue; Lecter exhaled deeply—an obscene sound, for him.

Hannibal lead, reigning back frantic panicked lustful Will, who was pushing and pressing lips and tongue as anxious as a dog. His pace was rough and steady. When he broke, it was only to kiss Will’s face, to bend his head to Will’s neck.

Will gasped, realizing he hadn't technically been breathing.

One of Lecter’s hands fell to pull Will against him. The younger man was so slim and strong and well-formed, Hannibal thought, he wanted to pin him with scalpels on paper to draw him, capture him. He made do outlining him with his hands, pulling Will, pinning him against himself.

Will was not thinking: he pressed his hips into the doctor’s and wrapped his hands around the other man’s broad, lean body.

And then he did start to think, and panicked.

“I don’t—what—“ but between each word he kissed, his voice breaking with—with something, Will didn’’t know, lust, hysteria, confusion, hilarity, any and all. He admitted, broken, that he didn’’t know what to do.

Hannibal almost bit into him then and there at Will’s sad little admission, his desperation to please. He pulled back, looking his remarkable boy over. His mouth was parted, his prominent upper lip curled.

Will’s face was set dark, mirroring Hannibal’s, he was touched to note. Will pawed and pulled roughly at the other man, under his suit jacket to feel his trim waist flaring up into broad muscled shoulders. He started unbuttoning Lecter’s vest, but got distracted and tried to loosen and remove his tie, before giving up and running his hands through Lecter’s hair, mussing it. 

Hannibal enjoyed Will’s startled clutching at first, until Will dropped to his knees.  
“Do I…do you want…?” he asked, as he fumbled with Lecter’s fly.

Hannibal sighed; it came out a snarl. He would have liked nothing more than to fuck Will’s delicate, emotive little mouth. It was still too soon, though.

Instead he reached down and smoothly pulled Will up by his neck, silencing his apologies with a rough, possessive kiss. WIll moaned, and Hannibal seriously considered throwing away months of serious planning in order to bend him over his desk and fuck him while he bit clever sharp designs into his strong smooth back. But that too could wait.

Will was already to the point of agitation; this would not do.

Hannibal pulled away from the young man, still holding his face. “Will,” he said, “my boy. It is all right.” This was, in its way, his own torture—Lecter always preferred his victims to believe they chose their fate. It was easier, in addition to lending a certain poetry to the proceedings.

“I just—I know. I know it’s all right. I just.” He hung his hands on Hannibal’s wrists, the older man still holding his face. Will had rarely seen Hannibal so solemn, so focused—the normal freeze of his face was pleasant, amused, calculating. There was something so tender and terrifying about his gaze—a blackness inside he could not see the bottom of, marred with lust—or something like lust, hunger, maybe—like beats of red blood.

“Will,” he repeated. “Allow me.” He pulled back, and gestured to his chair. “Please, sit.” His words were calm, the same low smoke as ever, except for an undercurrent of growl.

Will paused, swallowed. And nodded. He sat in his chair he always chose for therapy.

(Hannibal commanded; Will obeyed.)

Hannibal pursed his lips as he finished removing his tie, taking the opportunity to smooth his hair back. He ran the silk through his hands like a rope.

“Hands behind your back, Will,” he said.

“What?” Will looked far more incredulous than he actually felt.

“You shall keep your clothes on this time, I think.”

“You want me to—“

“Very much so. You are anxious; perhaps I can alleviate this by taking the lead.”

Will understood (of course he did) but couldn’t help but exasperatedly sigh as he put his arms obediently behind his back.

Hannibal rounded him, tying his wrists tight together with clinical quickness and precision. As the doctor pulled the it tight and Will was bound, he gasped, his heart pumping adrenaline, telling him he was in tremendous danger. His cock responded exactly incorrectly; Will always knew he had a problem conflating fear and lust. He closed his eyes as Lecter bend over him, to run his strong hands from Will’s narrow chest to his throat, cradling his head, applying a little too much pressure for a little too long before returning to kneel in front of him. Will burned as Hannibal positioned his long broad body between his legs.

“No,” Will said, “you can’t”

Hannibal cocked his head, almost smiling. “Out of your hands, my boy,” he said, and unbuttoned Will’s awful corduroy pants, removing his erection.

Heavy lip curling over strangely sharp teeth (Hannibal, Will realized, so rarely showed his teeth), he sank onto Will's cock.

As with everything, Hannibal managed to be mindlessly brutal even as he was tender, sucking and tonguing Will’s cock, one arm on Will’s thigh, the other assisting in ministrations. A great broad beast between his legs.

Will moaned, and struggled against his bonds to the point of pain. He wanted to run his hands through the other man's hair, to push him away, anything—but Hannibal, of course, has tied a real knot, and Will was powerless, and something about his utter powerlessness, of taking direction from and being used for pleasure by Lecter is all he could ever imagine wanting. He wondered if these were his own thoughts; he seemed to feel them pulsing electric through his whole body, especially in that aching point of contact of his cock and Hannibal’s hot, wet mouth and mobile lips and oh god that tongue, sucking tight.

Hannibal curled his hand around Will’s waist, under his shirt to feel his sun-warm skin, as his head and mouth bobbed and worked. The sounds in the air were soft and slick and wet from Lecter, sibilant and urgent from Will. As Lecter's hand dug into Will, Will gasped, bucking his hips in spite of himself.

Will managed to look down—the sheer, heavy-lidded delight on the other man’s face almost too much for him to take, combined with the fact that it was Lecter on his knees in front of bound Will, Lecter who had engineered this, Lecter who was so obviously enjoying every taste of him. Graham panted, and writhed, and struggled, and Hannibal held him down, drawing out his lust as he has drawn out everything he ever wanted out of Will.

The young man realized, somewhere, how elegantly Lecter had manipulated this—him—but somehow the thought only sharpened his desire, that someone would want him so badly. That Lecter had rebuilt the labyrinths of his head with himself at the center.

(Did that make him the goal? Or the place to avoid at all costs? Will had forgotten how labyrinths worked. Thanks to Lecter’s ministrations, actually, he was forgetting how everything worked except the tight sheer need being laid bare between his legs.)

Will tried to tell him to stop, (he told himself), but what came out was a desperate keen and gasp, as he bucked and struggled.

Hannibal smiled and pushed him down, as Will hummed desperately. When Lecter started delicately scraping his teeth against his cock, Will tried to tear his arms away. The silk tie cut into his skin, and as Lecter’s hand pushed viciously against his hipbone, Will came with a cry--that gorgeous, searing, desperate oblivion.

Lecter closed his eyes, mouth and tongue still moving as Will twitched and pulsed out his orgasm. He swallowed, satiated, his whole face flickering in the satisfaction of a conqueror as Will struggled to catch his breath, heart pounding.

“Good Will,” he murmured, still kneeling between the man’s legs as he gently unbuttoned Will’s shirt to see his heart pounding. “You’ve done so well.”

Will moaned.

Lecter rose up on his knees. Will was panting and leaning back, struggling for breath, not even trying to compose himself.

Lecter finished unbuttoning Will’s rumpled shirt, exposing his beautiful defined chest, with its dusting of dark hair and its furiously pounding heart. Gently, almost reverently, he let his lips hover above Will’s heart.

Strangely, even after being sucked off by his psychiatrist, even with his limp cock resting outside his pants, with Hannibal’s lips on his heart Will felt more uncomfortably open than ever.

Hannibal pressed an open-mouthed kiss against Will’s chest and his breath hitched. He scraped his teeth; he licked and kissed and sucked as he felt Will’s wildly fluttering heart under his tongue.

“Are you going to eat my heart,” Will asked, nonsensically, perhaps thinking of the previous crime they examined but perhaps foreseeing a future one.

Lecter raised his head, as he tucked Will gently back into his pants. He reached around to untie his hands.

“Yes,” he said.

II.III

They would both wake up screaming in the dark, sometimes, they tell Hannibal. Separately. Will is chased by specters he couldn’t kill; Clarice is chased by specters she couldn’t save.

He loves them in the dark.

Will would start sweating when the dreams come, even if he isn’t shuffling or moaning—any of those would wake Hannibal almost immediately. Will still sleeps in his thin shirts and boxers, if he sleeps in anything, which was increasingly rare. The young man was never overly fond of being held; he prefers anchors. Hooks.

He would turn towards Hannibal, lacing his fingers with the other man’s. If he wakes up and sometimes even when he doesn’t, he’d whisper dreams into Hannibal’s chest. Into his mouth, if he has pressed their foreheads together.

Clarice never vocalizes. She would curl and tense and kick, and curl herself around and into him. She never sleeps in anything. She would hold too tight and wrap herself around him as if she were saving him, somehow—molding her tender body to his. She’d snarl softly with her soft full lips and sharp little teeth into his chest and neck. He would watch and feel her heart beat furious under her pale skin and full breast.

Will seeks to please, always; he wants to be spent, blinded, to find oblivion. Clarice wants definition: to be seen, to be recognized, to be paid attention to. Understood. Lecter loves both equally. He doesn’t care. He is the only one who could give them what they seek (he has seen to that) and that is all that matters to him.

When preparing tartare, after the fat and fibrous skin is trimmed, one is left with the meat. Below Lecter’s lean hands the meat is dark red—vibrant. Still almost alive.

The meat of the heart is the brightest in the body.

It is so bright and so flavorful because the heart is a constantly working muscle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS THING REALLY GOT AWAY FROM ME.
> 
> Beta'ed retroactively by tumblr's own superstar editor/human/secret agent tiredteaspoons.


	3. First Taste Part II: Clarice

II. IV

Clarice Starling, who moved as prey through a hostile world, was used to others wanting her body. Hannibal Lecter would watch her stoic angry simmer as others looked her up and down and fumbled at her in their heads. They’d demand her complacency in this, and ambitious Clarice would mostly acquiesce.

Lecter did not blame their desire. Clarice was luscious. He knew it was his years-long fast, but even just seeing her he felt a sharp stab of hunger curving like a carpet needle, a linoleum knife, from mouth to heart and down. In his cold sterile prison, Lecter found himself giving profound thought to catching her up as she ran, pinning her soft strong little self down as he sank teeth and tongue and cock deep inside her. Sometimes, she struggled; more often he had arranged things so she had invited him in. No, he did not blame others’ desire. 

But Clarice Starling was his.

The trick though with his Clarice would be not to just gain access to her lovely body, but her lovely mind as well.

As it was, Hannibal could not believe his good fortune that Clarice would come running back to him again and again.

In their exchanges, her hunger was his weapon (just as his hunger was hers; they were both aware of this). Their conversations took place on either side of a glass wall. He would pass bits of information and clues on her new case to her through a sliding drawer. In return, he had her chop up little bits of her heart and pass it through the ventilation holes in the glass, carried over on her clear strong voice along with her scent, the sound of her pulse.

And for some time this arrangement had to satisfy him. 

Perhaps, Lecter mused, it was for the best. After all, a man starved could easily kill himself when presented with a feast. He would eat too much too fast, and burst.

Starling, whether she knew it or not, had been sent by Jack Crawford to catch Buffalo Bill. Crawford again, caring more about dead bodies than the delectable tools he used to catch their killers. Crawford, who had waited just long enough for Lecter to feel nearly dead from hunger to dangle such a very tender, very bright, very beautiful little thing so closely in front of his cage. Crawford, a sadist in his own right.

At first Lecter had treated Starling like the bait she was. He had teased her and toyed with her and sent her back with one obscure clue. But Clarice figured it out--half because she had figured Lecter out.

(“The human mind can’t make connections like that,” he sometimes remembers a voice saying.

“Yours can,” he had assured him.

He remembers Will’s smile. He wonders what it looks like now.)

She came back to him the same night she found the body—a man’s head in a jar, all made up like royalty, false eyelashes peeling off in the formaldehyde. The lights were off; he sat in the back of his cell, watching. She couldn’t see him, and this delighted him. She must have run straight to him, Lecter mused. How charming. How delicious. 

“Sorry, sir,” she drawled, peering into his cell. “I hope I didn’t wake you—I was told you would see me?” She could not hide the excitement in her voice, her hunger for what he had to say. Her accent--her lax round vowels pooled in the back of her throat, with her liquids and retroflexes, like she was drowning, like she could barely exhale. The sound of her struggling with it was as familiar as it was intoxicating.

“Not at all, Agent Starling,” he said. “It is my pleasure to receive you. Tell me what you found. Tell me how you felt.”

(Tell me, he had asked him, over and over, how does it make you feel?)

As she told him, he took her in from his hiding place in the dark. Starling was wet from sweat and rain. He could smell them both, rinsing with the Evian skin cream. She sat close to the glass, leaning in. Her dark wet hair curled around her pretty pale face, flushed with excitement and chill. So different from his firm, rough, sun-skinned boy.

Delightfully, he could also smell she had been bleeding—a soft ebb from where her adventures had scraped and marked her. Her skin, he could tell, showed marks easily. He longed to mark it with his own teeth.

As he watched her the glass between them had never seemed thicker. Not even the first day (week, year) in his cell, without his books, without his Will, with only his ghost reflection to study.

Moving softly he passed her his towel through the sliding drawer. He slammed it over; it startled her, like he hoped.

“Thank you,” she said, taking it.

“Your bleeding has stopped,” he murmured, as she toweled herself off.

This comment startled her more than the slam; she recovered as gracefully. 

She told him how she solved the puzzle, climbed the wall, found the head. All alone. Lecter wished he could have watched her as he had watched Will. Clarice was more like Lecter than Will Graham, but she shared something important with Will—she was gentle and kind, and wanted no one to suffer needlessly. She had a tremendous heart.  
__

Clarice struck a devil’s bargain with Lecter—the only kind he made. He told her that he would help her catch the killer in exchange for a cell with windows and a view.

She stared at him as he gave his terms, suspicious and enchanted, with her dark hair and light eyes. So like Will’s actually—but hers were storm-blue and clear behind the glass, rather than clear but stormy, behind glasses.

(Memory, as he will tell her, is what one has instead of a view.)

She returned soon with terms, wanting more. He had more terms too—her heart. If he told her about the killer, she must tell him about herself.

“Quid pro quo,” he said. “Yes or no.”

He hoped Jack had at least the good grace to warn Clarice not to acquiesce. But whether he had or not, Clarice was too hungry to turn Lecter down. She pared off and slipped him little pieces of her heart. Clarice felt him piercing in, penetrating—and unlike Will, she shut him out. This was not an intimacy she was accustomed to.

Too bad, he thought.

She would have to get used to it; she would learn to welcome it.

Lecter would see to that.

—

When he got his paper and his drawing utensils back, he drew his Starling.

He formed her under his hands as he saw her, this time with slick graphite sticks and pastels. He could do such better work and definition with a scalpel, of course, but one worked with what one had. And still, he could do so much without sharp edges. With dusty charcoal and the smoke of his voice, instead of hands and scalpels.

(“How do you see me?” Will had asked.)

He drew her as pieta, as Leda, as any number of things, before he sketched just her.

She was beautiful, and his. His Clarice. She would never belong to or be truly seen by anyone else. 

Like before, he tested her: he set for her walls and traps that she (like he) ran through and over. Neither undamaged, nor destroyed. Like before, Lecter set himself as necessary middle of her maze. The heart of the labyrinth. The minotaur in the ribcage.

—

The last time Clarice saw Hannibal imprisoned was the first time he touched her. It was also the first time he tasted her heart.

The situation was bad--Jack had made her promise a bad deal to Lecter. The doctor had retaliated with bad information. But a girl’s life was in danger, and Clarice had to see him again.

The new room they were keeping Lecter in was laughably theatrical. He was in a giant cage in a vaulted room, surrounded by wooden police barriers. The room was old, in reds and golds and dark woods--the opposite of the cool close blue cell she was used to. In his cage, Lecter had a desk, and paintings. His clothes were white and close to his body. The air smelled of wood and charcoal and metal.

Clarice clipped up in her black pumps. Her steps echoed like heartbeats.

Lecter’s back was to her, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. His hair was dark and slicked back. He was reading. Although perhaps too severe to be handsome, she couldn’t quite quell her attraction. For Clarice, Hannibal’s dark eyes and strange and over-fed mouth were a magnet. A sharp-toothed trap.

She felt a stab of anticipation for when he would turn and see her.

There was something indescribably intense—almost intoxicating—about being seen by him. It felt, without any exaggeration, like being penetrated. 

She knew--at least, she told herself—that these feelings were symptomatic of circumstance. Of fear and anxiety and excitement wrapped up with his danger and deviancy But when he reached in and pulled memories out of her, when his eyes raked her body, she felt a pull toward him both in her heart and—well. Lower. Certainly during their time together she felt fed upon; she invited it, though, and felt in no manner lessened. 

Clarice hoped he did not see this about her, although she was positive he could. 

\--

Lecter heard her even before she stepped into the room; he had already decided he would not let her go unpunished. Without turning, he accused her of coming for one last scrabble at saving her reputation, at Jack Crawford’s request.

“No,” she told him. “I came because I wanted to.”

Lecter could hear her catching her breath through parted lips. Yes, he affirmed again, he very much preferred her running to him.

“People will say we’re in love,” he tsked, turning around.

Clarice swallowed as she met his gaze. She could hear his contempt, his sneer, dripping like poison honey pooled in his mouth.

Through the bars Lecter listened to Starling’s voice growing breathless as she tried to bargain. She began to pace. He could almost smell her heart beating and pulsing. 

(How he longed to control its beating, her blood welling and releasing—her gasping and breathless and crying out—with his hands and mouth instead of his words.)

“Tell me how to catch him,” she said. It’s meant to be a command; it came out a plea, pitching up, a familiar keen and desperation to her voice. There was a girl out there after all, who needed saving, and a villain that needed stopping. It never once, for all her brilliance, occurred to Clarice that the girl might be her.

Just for that, he humored her. “Think. What needs does Bill serve by killing?” he repeated, patiently.

“Anger,” she said. “Social acceptance. Sexual frustration.” She was drawing herself, like all fledgling profilers.

“No,” Hannibal said, leaning in. “He covets. That is his nature.”

Hannibal Lecter’s own nature was to devour. Clarice knew this, even as she held his steady bloody gaze.

Hannibal felt his own nature more than ever, as he leaned into the space between them and lacerated her with his words and voice and eyes. He heard her precious heart thrumming like a rite of spring. 

“Please,” she soon begged, not thinking how sweet the sound of her pleas might be to him, “tell me.”

Will never demanded anything from Hannibal that Hannibal hadn’t already given, or promised to give. This new one was exhilarating.

He denied her. “No,” he said. “It’s your turn to tell me.”

“Later,” she commanded, or tried to. “Listen to me. We’ve only got-“

“No,” he commanded. “I will listen….now.” He pinned her; bound her like silk with his dark eyes and dark words. Tied tight and trembling for Lecter to take as he pleased.

He urged her along the story he wanted, drawing her out. She fluttered in pain, in discomfort, in strange pleasure even as she told him. 

(So like his warm, tousled Will, and yet--while Will wanted to lose himself, Clarice wanted to be seen.)

She told him of the night she ran away, of when she tried to save a lamb from slaughter, in the cold clear night. She told him she thought if she could save just one--but she couldn’t. 

He asked her if she still woke up to the lambs screaming.

Clarice had almost gone completely still.

There was one moment when he saw a dark flicker in her eyes, that he thought she might shut him out. Save herself.

He was wrong. He could hardly remember such delight at being so.

She laid herself open for him.

“Yes,” she said. She was overcome—the dark tense knot she always carried in her heart, in her body, rising, overwhelming.

He drew in a breath through his sharp teeth. 

“You think,” he said, and his voice was monotonous and clipped and mesmerizing, his accented words lulling her into some permutation of submission, “you think if you save the poor kidnapped girl you can make them stop, don’t you. You think if the girl lives you won’t wake up in the dark ever again, to that awful screaming of the lambs.”

He was the first person on earth she had ever shared this story with; it was if the secret had been waiting just for him. That he had been waiting, just for her. She felt…held, somehow, even as she knew she was violated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Yes.” Something in her released, relaxed; she shivered. 

Something released for both of them, as Hannibal Lecter tasted his first heart in years—as Clarice was truly tasted for the first time.

She exhaled.

He inhaled.

Lecter’s face shifted to something human. “Thank you,” he hissed, “thank you.”

She was almost immediately pulled away by authorities—even as she cried out for him to fill his end of the deal. 

Hannibal made her fight to get the case file from him. She shook off her escort and ran, beautifully, to him. When he gave it to her, their hands touched.

Just a brush of fingers, really.

And yet it would be enough to sustain him for almost seven more years.

Of course his brave sweet girl figured it all out. She caught the killer and saved the lamb—saved the girl, instead of herself. 

Something about the taste of her heart gave Hannibal the strength he needed. It was time, he decided, to leave.

Escape was a simple enough matter of efficient time management and effective application of bullets, teeth, and handcuffs--and of course, his own flourishes when there was room. He peeled off one officer’s face to wear it as a disguise to be escorted out of the building. He left the building in an ambulance. He left the ambulance a free man.

He perhaps didn’t have to kill the tourist for his clothes, but he had been so hungry for so long. It felt so good to taste real blood again, he thought, buttoning the man’s shirt. There was a part of him that wished it was his little starling’s.

Because it pleased him to continue to invade and make a place for himself in her head, he sent her a letter from his eventual hideaway.

I have windows, he wrote her. I can see Orion and Jupiter; I expect you can see them too.

Some of our stars, he told her in his letter (he never told him; he never got the chance) are the same.

II.V

Hannibal has large, long hands, with blunted fingertips and well-cared-for nails. Under the skin of his wrists and forearms, muscles and tendons pull. Under his hands, the red of the heart is the red of his eyes.

The light is such that he cannot see out the windows, whether there are stars or not. What he can see is himself, tall and lean and well-formed, deftly slicing off a piece of heart to taste it.

The taste blooms bloody on his tongue, and dissipates.

He swallows; his eyes narrow, his lips quirk up.

He loves his rare hearts.

And these days he is never left wanting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-ed by the brilliant brilliant tiredteaspoons (on tumblr.) Go follow her. Sing her praises. She deserves it good heavens.


	4. Offering: Ixiptla

III.I. 

It was a matter of deconstruction; to parse the heart, before it could be reformed.

The only sound in the kitchen: the smooth wet chop of Lecter’s expertly-wielded blade. He takes the pared-down compartments of the heart and begins to mince.

Some chefs lightly braise the heart before cutting; some chop it roughly and in large slices. 

Lecter considers both practices a crude way of covering mistakes. He prefers raw; he prefers chopped as finely as possible. The finest hearts can stand the force and scrutiny. He chooses hearts that are perfect, or can be made so through care. He always prided himself on his ability to spot truly exceptional potential.

(They had asked him about Will; they would have asked him about Clarice. The questions were irrelevant; they were his. They were his to do as he pleased, but first they had to be split open and pulled apart.)

Lecter’s face is impassive except for his heavy mouth and slightly flared nostrils. The metal tang of blood, like the metallic tint to his own voice, is heavy in the air and underlaid with the perfume of the flowers and people from the dining room.

Another sound cuts, also from the next room. Laughter.

He smiles, then, and cuts.

 

III.II. 

It was a matter of conditioning. Of training and eliciting a certain response.

Hannibal untied Will. The taste of him lingered pleasantly. 

Will blinked at the office as if surprised at such a familiar setting, remembering all at once the dozens of times they had sat politely across from one another instead of Hannibal kneeling hungrily between his legs just then. He only shook a little as he rubbed the red marks from his wrists, unable to meet Hannibal’s eyes. (Will was endearingly childlike when preoccupied, like he only had room in his head for one subject at once.) 

“So what does this mean, now?” he said. 

Hannibal’s tie was ruined, the blue silk sweated on and pulled out of shape like an old noose. He would enjoy wearing it the rest of the day. “Means only we have acted on mutual desire.” He reached out a broad hand to brush back Will’s hair, which lay in mussed and warmly wet curls over his forehead.

He jolted at the touch, and stood, and sort of gasp-laughed, and hung his hands around his neck before turning. “Can I still see you? Will you keep seeing me? Does anything have to change?”

He covered Will’s hands with his. Will was not a small or slight man, but Hannibal’s hands were larger than his. “Nothing will change that you do not wish. I only take what is freely offered.”

“Offered?” A corner of Will’s lips tugged up, like a hooked fish. “Can I kiss you?”

“That will change, I suppose. Yes. Of course.”

He jerked forward to press his lips against Hannibal’s, with the same confrontational daring that failed to endear him to his colleagues. 

Lecter felt him laugh against his mouth, and he pulled back so they could share one of Will Graham’s rare smiles, that cracked and bled across his sweet face like sunlight, like blood from split skin.

 

—

The world began tilting away from the sun, and the days grew colder. 

He tended to Will as he had always done and more: he counseled him, fed him, sent him home with music and literature. Or rather, he made it clear that Will was welcome to anything in his office and then left out what he would like Will to consume (experimental Parisian pre-electronica; an illustrated Decameron). Will would hold them up, with raised eyebrows and open mouth, only for he to impatiently nod and wave an assent.

One Sunday, he approached Will’s house with an offering of lunch. The grass and gravel crunched with melting frost under his fine leather shoes. The leaves were gold and dead, but the sun was still bright.

Lecter was fascinated by the house as a facet of Will. All the textures and colors were muted and soft; flowing seamlessly and haphazardly into one another. He slept downstairs to be with his dogs. who lent it a gentle, desperate, loving sort of energy that he fed off of. 

(He collected strays, who had endured a hopeless sort of abandonment he identified with. In tending the abused, the strayed, he was of course tending himself--playing at St. Roch, although Hannibal much preferred him as St. Sebastian, tied with his morals and shot through with his lusts.)

(Lust, like perception: a weapon pointed at both ends)

The house, his sanctuary, was entirely the opposite of the dark sharp hungry spaces in his mutinous mind. His ship stationary on smooth water as he himself dissolved into storm waves.

As before, Will looked him over as he answered the door. He was still in his pajamas to Hannibal’s delight—the pale tight fabric clinging to his musculature, the soft weight of his cock. Hannibal could smell the sleepiness and confusion as well as see it in the way he blinked, in the childish manner he ran the back of his hand across his forehead. This time, he smiled.

“You didn’t have to come all this way,” Will said, like he always said, and always meant it. He hovered around the table as the doctor set up his lunch with a soft clink of plate and silverware on uncovered wood. Will was so unused to this casual (seemingly) benign positive attention that it threw him off-balance while still making him as grateful as one of his dogs.

“It is my pleasure,” Hannibal said, like he always said, and always meant it. “Now,” he continued, as he carefully served the food. “We have here soft-scrambled jidori hen egg, with lacquered veal sweetbreads, red-tipped spinach, toasted brioche, and shaved Australian black truffle.” 

They sat across from one another at a small, battered pine table. Will took a messy bite and moaned happily. “Jesus, this is too good.” He had poor posture and hunched over his plate, leaned too far back while chewing and thinking.

“Not at all,” he smiled, because the sight of Will eating was more delicious than any food. 

“I just wish I could return the favor.” He spoke with his mouth full, a combination of thoughtlessness and subconscious rebellion against Hannibal’s consummate poise. “But all I can offer you is an all-access pass to some pretty gruesome murders. And. Well. Whatever else.” 

He looked up briefly, stealing eye contact before returning his gaze to the food. “I still don’t see what you get from me. What you see in me.”

Hannibal almost imagined he could see Will’s heart beat under the thin shirt. He laughed, softly. “Perhaps someday you will.”

A pause, before Will jerked out of his chair and to the fridge. He returned with some old orange juice and another glass. “Here,” he said, not looking at the other man. “If you want some. Thought I should at least, um, offer.”

“Thank you,” Hannibal said, pouring himself some. It was vile. He drank all of it. 

It was early evening when he returned to his car. The leftover food joined the spices and other amenities he had left at Will’s place to further ensure his presence in Will’s mind even after he was gone.

The frost had melted under even the slight sun, so he moved silently. He cut through the cool air, darkening and purpling as a bruise blooming, as through water, sleek and dark and sharp-toothed.

—

Will agreed to dinner after some mild cajoling (the shift in their intimacy had him now uncertain about previously everyday interactions) and he arrived one evening just minutes after the sunset bled out. He was nervous and agitated, and thus already slightly aroused.

He greeted him warmly with a brief kiss: one hand on Will’s cheek, feeling bone and skin and scruff, Will’s lips tense under his. He disengaged when Will attempted to deepen the kiss; it was better to wait. To keep Will, as he always was, at the mercy of his own desires (as well as Hannibal’s).

He enjoyed the aesthetics of Will Graham in his house. Compact, strong and warm and sweet. Sun and honey against colors of bruise and tortured elegant shapes of bone, against the decadence of rotting flowers, all twisted in a violent sumptuous precision. Hannibal’s house was an extension of himself—cold pale angles, surprised by the lushness of his lips and the depth of the red of his eyes.

For an unsophisticated palette, Hannibal made something recognizable. (Charcoal-grilled medallions of what approximated Japanese wagyu beef; holland white asparagus, royal blenheim apricots, chanterelles, sunflower seeds.) Will was sweet and brilliant but a terrible conversationalist; he had the bad habit of bringing up work. Or rather: murder, death, lust, all that darkness always buzzing in his lovely little mind. 

Will spoke of the girl in West Virginia, and how her death felt the product of at least some version of awe, or affection. “I mean,” he said, misinterpreting Hannibal’s arched eyebrow. “The usual, you know, hard and animal selfishness, urgency. But there was an element of...worship, maybe. Which sounds disgusting. Because it is disgusting, god, what a thing to talk about at dinner. I’m sorry. I tried to warn you.” He looked at his plate, dejected.

Were Hannibal seriously invested in helping Will function in society, he would have taught him to steer clear of such subjects. Hannibal, however, considered himself seriously invested in helping Will realize his potential, and thus such discussions were encouraged

He cocked his head, smiled kindly. “Perhaps, though, it is a kind of worship.”

Will remained hunched and still. “You don’t believe that.”

“A stunted and banal form of it, but perhaps a form nonetheless.” He took a sip of wine, considering for a moment, and replaced his glass. “A good word, worship. Old English. It means, in short, to show something its true state of profound value.”

Will looked back up, into the table’s centerpiece of bone and flowers. “To let it see.”

“Precisely.”

He smiled. (The pull of his full bottom lip and perfectly, nervously delineated upper lip worthy, to Hannibal Lecter, of worship.)

After dinner, Lecter brought Will wine in the parlor. He got as far as pressing a glass into his hand.

Will took one gulp, licked his lips, set it down. He pulled Hannibal closer by the lapels, snaking one hand around his waist and around his neck to bend his head down.

Will, like Hannibal, tended to go still or thoughtful when some great feeling or desire coursed through his blood. His face was still except for the hunger in his eyes—he was the one who pressed his lips to his, who tongued his mouth open.

He was barely able to put his own wine glass down for Will roughly trying to remove his jacket and waistcoat. He pulled them off himself, carefully, to embrace Will, to remove his always-rumpled shirt to run his hands and nails over his warm, firm flesh.

Hannibal directed, with his own elegant brutality, and Will submitted--oh, he submitted so beautifully. Through touch and tongue and soft sibilant encouragements, he directed and channeled his rough ministrations. To Will, all desire was searing and crashing like ocean storms. He was swept along and could only cling, and in Hannibal’s arms and under his mouth and teeth and tongue he almost hummed, trembling.

When he fell to his knees this time Hannibal did not stop him. All he did was run a proprietary hand through Will’s soft dark curls as he undid Lecter’s belt, his fly, and the desperate look of sheer want on Will’s face would have been enough alone to make him hard, were he not already.

Will took him in his mouth, hot and wet and eager and sloppy, closing his eyes as he ran his tongue around and over, and sucked and licked and pulled. 

Hannibal inhaled audibly through his sharp teeth, tilting his head back for a moment (only a moment) before again watching his Will, beautiful lips stretched around his cock. He was still rough and uncertain, and far too eager--the novelty of an unskilled lover was exhilarating.

He stroked Will’s head gently before tightening his grip as he thrust into his mouth. Slowly; not too deep at first. 

But only at first. Will was, after all, such a quick study.

Hannibal’s thrusts turned to jabs as he fucked Will’s lovely mouth gone slack, his throat contracting around him as he struggled not to gag, and failed, and struggled harder. (Such a good boy.) Tears bled bright trails down Will’s lashes and cheeks from shared and greedy intimacy. The sounds of him gasping and choking—desperate, wet sounds—were exquisite. 

Will dug his nails hard into Hannibal’s leg. He pulled him back by the hair to let him breathe; but it was Will who resumed, sinking back down on Hannibal’s cock after only two or three shuddering gasps, after a soft and hoarse “please, come, please.”

(Hannibal did not teach him savagery; he taught him how to weaponize it rather than only wounding himself.)

He murmured an assent, and laced both hands through his hair and around his skull and fucked him in an increasingly brutal rhythm. He held his head as he did so, because the body’s instinct was for space and light and air, and the stabbing rhythm and asphyxiation was merciless for poor choking Will.

But Will was used to denying such basic instincts as sanity and stability, and used to gratifying one desire at the cost of another. All it took was practice.

He realized how Will had improved with practice.

Hannibal tugged at Will’s hair as he came, with a gasp, holding him in place as he spent down his throat, finishing in his mouth to make him taste and swallow.

Will did, between gasps, accidentally spluttering and then licking his lips and looking up hopefully through dark wet lashes as if for approval.

His brave sweet boy. His rough and savage suffering boy.

Two more dinners like that and Will slept over, shy in the finely appointed bedroom and too-decadent bed. His sleep was untroubled. He did not press himself against Hannibal—he never did—but (as always) kept one hand on him, like an anchor.

Another month of such nights, and Will rarely slept at his own place anymore. Hannibal hired a dog-sitter. He told him after a few weeks they would not miss him unduly.

It was a matter of conditioning.

—

One morning Hannibal awoke to a spindle of annoyance—a cell phone, ringing. Will knocked it off a still unfamiliar nightstand attempting to answer it.

West Virginia, again. Another dead girl. The landscape curved and cold and primly voluptuous in the late fall, with gold leaves barely clinging to dead fractaling branches. Flat narrow rivers cut through the hills, with low and brackish smells and tumbling murmurs undercutting the buzz of birds and insects.

Looping through the untouched landscape, Will was at ease in such familiarly unthreatening countryside. He actually smiled and laughed on the drive before they reached the others, adding Lecter’s fine car to the circle of police vehicles and black sedans. He doesn’t put on his glasses until he exits the car, shutting the door behind him too hard.

(Will did not and never quite would acknowledge their relationship in public, until he was forced to by the press, and his injuries would spare him much of that. Hannibal preferred their relationship unconfronted and thus unexamined. Both men were aware, however, of how it looked when good Dr. Lecter drove Will Graham to the scene, and spoke to him quietly before they joined the others with his hand resting briefly on the agent’s jawline, thumb on the corner of his mouth.)

Katz and Zeller pull Will aside to brief him, casting nakedly curious but still polite glances at Hannibal. Katz especially could not seem to quite stifle a grin from her impishly pretty face.

Jack Crawford--kind, brutal, blustering Jack--was not pleased to see Lecter; he made it known as Will was guided away to the victim. Special Agent Graham, he said, was not authorized to request his presence.

Hannibal regarded Jack. “I am, frankly, surprised he is authorized to be here at all, despite his desire to help.”

“I trust Will to speak for himself,” Jack said, before his face darkened further at his own words.

Hannibal grinned, showing sharp uneven teeth. Jack would change his mind about needing him.

The crime scene was almost identical to the one previous: a college-age girl, on a pile of mattresses, raped, heart torn out of a split rib cage, all red and black and covered in flies under torn white skin. Her dark hair shone in the pale sun where it was not caked with blood.

A tedious personal fugue of grimy compulsion, Hannibal thought, allowing his lip to curl in amusement. (Others would interpret the gesture as one of disgust.)

Yet Will gave his whole heart over to the scene as always. He closed his eyes, and gasped, and whispered to himself. He knew it hurt him. They all knew it hurt him, but the price had been deemed acceptable. His breath curled in the cold air as he leant over the corpse. His face was lovely when it went dark with purpose; at once boyish and monstrous. It was similar, Hannibal thought, to Will’s face under his own hands.

Will’s mouth mimicked Hannibal’s, curling in a distaste that did not quite touch his tired eyes as he shared his conclusions. He pretended that what he saw only horrified him, when in fact he felt the same hungers echoed in his own heart, and elsewhere.

His conclusions were not novel enough; Crawford (who had been staring at the girls open empty eyes and sad mouth before speaking) let him know this in no uncertain terms.

Will trembled slightly at being berated and Hannibal stewed quietly in his horror at Jack’s audacity to try and control his young man. 

(Hannibal knew hearts, and he would break Jack’s again and again until it gave out.)

When they returned to the car, Will leaned his back against it, running his hands over his face, breathing deeply.

“You must feel a strange kinship with the poor girl,” Hannibal observed, pretending to believe the younger man was empathising with the victim. “Both being used by others for their own selfish purpose. Both being sacrificed.”

Will smiled, a sad little jerk, before opening his eyes. “She’s just being sacrificed for the good of one, not the all. And anyways. I’m not a sacrifice.” His elocution would always go a bit over-enunciated and forced, when he meant something. He sighed and wrapped his arms around himself, and when Hannibal put a gentle hand on his shoulder, over the softly worn and padded fabric of his green coat, he leaned into it. 

Lecter cocked his head, assumed a tender and concerned expression that was mostly genuine.

“Sometimes,” Will said, and his face was serious, was dark with thought, as his eyes moved from Hannibal’s eyes to his mouth and back, and Hannibal thinks that if they were not in public he might have allowed himself to be kissed.

He continued. “Sometimes I can think I know what it is to want to eat a heart.”

He placed his hand on the Hannibal’s chest, near his shoulder. His eyes followed his hand as he let it slip down the thick, fine dark fabric of Hannibal’s coat to rest over his heart.

 

—

While Will was occupied with procedural business the next day, Hannibal occupied himself at the nearest art museum the region had to offer. 

Admission free to undergraduates that day, unfortunately--he almost left when he realized, almost did something worse when a group of still-forming young women brushed into and past him.

Only one turned back, a pretty thing. Red-brown hair and bright-blue eyes, far more shining and clever than her friends. A remote girl; a winter-sun girl.

“Sorry, sir,” she said, before turning her back and joining her friends. Lecter could taste the lushness of her accent, like sugar syrup and sharp-tasting berries on snow. He worried his tongue at the inside of his lips.

The exhibit was of Aztec-inspired sun-discs. Broad stone and gold masterpieces; implacable and violent. The windows were wide, and let the honeyed light in. It shone off the girls’ hair as they stood in front of the discs like offerings themselves.

He watched. He watched the girls. He watched the man who watches the girls. And licked his teeth.

He waited a week, when Will was told he must return, before taking him to the museum, keeping him up all night for two nights before he did so—it would be best, for Hannibal’s purposes, for Will to understand what waited for him in blaring gold on the walls, were he to be a little…fluid. (He cannot deny he also enjoyed the process of inciting this state.) 

The first night Will came to him himself, bright and warm in his large lush bed in dark lush colors like rotting rose petals. Time with Hannibal was time untormented by his own head; he could think.

The second night Will expressed a desire to sleep, so Hannibal made sure he sharpened other desires to overwhelm him. At this point, Hannibal only tied him when necessary and by request. 

Far more effective and enchanting was Will obeying invisible bonds, Hannibal’s commands, completely and without question, because he wanted to.

—

The museum was not crowded like last time. Their steps echoed. Hannibal was uninterested in the small collection of Impressionists, but Will liked the muddied light of them. He was exhausted, though--he got distracted, he trailed off, he allowed small liberties to be taken like being led by the waist. 

When they entered the room with the sun-discs, there were two pretty but otherwise unexceptional young women looking at the art, and a thin man in his early thirties looking at the girls looking at the art. The girls were giggling; the sun hit their black and gold hair as they stood dwarfed in front of the main gold circle. The man wore cheap suits from off the rack and seemed displeased to be disturbed. 

The girls, and then the man, left just as they entered. Hannibal watched the man leave. Will did not notice; he was taken aback by the sun-disc.

He stood in front of the main disc--golden monsters and gods intertwined, reflecting the sun like noon.

“Hannibal,” he said softly, “This is...”

“I thought you might find it engaging.” He walked up behind to take him in his arms, lean his cheek against his. If Will had been more himself he would have protested this public display.

“The girls, though. Just now.”

“Oh? You find the young women more engaging?”

“What? Yes. No. More...it was the way they stood-, before the discs. The way they were in the sun. In front of the sun. I.” He was silent. 

Arms around him, Hannibal quietly relished the way Will tensed and then went slack, in the way his breathing quickened and hitched. Well worth the sleep he had lost himself.

“Our killer was here,” Will said, finally. “He saw his girls here, he somehow--wanted to love them as gods, as...but also to take their lives. I’m not--not sure.” He swallowed, and cursed.

Hannibal couldn’t resist driving in the knife. “Did you want to take a life just now, my dear boy? To lay open a breast and carve out a heart, for your very own?”

Will stiffened; said nothing, and Hannibal had to keep himself from biting into his neck in delight. Instead, he savored Will’s usual smell combined with the electric flushes of pain and shame, and murmured, “Are you familiar with the concept of the ixiptla?”

“No,” he answered, just as soft.

“It was a version of human sacrifice performed by the Aztecs. They would choose the most well-formed young women--and young men, like you—“

“I am not well-formed, Doctor.”

He pressed his face against a scruffy cheek, inhaling through his nose, murmuring along the tendons of Will’s neck. “I must disagree—do you doubt my taste?”

“Never,” he said, sarcastic, but the smile took a long time to leave his lips.

“They would choose one perfect boy or girl to sacrifice to save all the others; one heart eaten so all the others could keep beating. An ixiptla was viewed as a kind of god himself--the sun’s brilliance made flesh--and when his turn came he would submit willingly to the knife.”

“Willingly?” he asked. 

Later, in the hotel bedroom (Jack always knew when Hannibal joined Will if only for the exorbitant hotel charges) when he lay with his hand on Hannibal’s chest, he repeated his question. "Willingly,” he said. “They submit to being devoured willingly.”

“So the stories go,” Hannibal answered. “Is it so hard to imagine?”

“They let themselves be killed. Be eaten. To be loved by their god.”

“However a god loves. But yes. They believed their death served some higher purpose—not only that, but it was the only way they’d reach the daylight heaven.The land of the sun.”

Will’s eyes were closed; he was half-asleep but his smile snagged and spread, and as always Hannibal echoed it. “They lived in a nighttime world,” he murmured. “In our cold winter nighttime world. The only way they could see the sun.”

He placed his hand over Will’s, and closed his eyes.

(When Hannibal dreamt that night, perhaps what he saw prefigured his future—a very beautiful, very young woman, reminding him that it was only through pleasing her, through making a deal through her that he’d ever get out of his cell and see daylight again.

Her red-brown hair would shine even under the white buzzing hospital lights as harsh as her lovely eyes, as she told him in her sugar-sharp accent that she was the only way he would see the sun again.

And he would believe her.

Willingly.)

\--

After that, they linked the kills to the museum almost too easily--all victims, although attending different colleges in different majors, had attended the museum before their deaths on the day they were allowed in free. (And, of course, the bloody iconography of those boundless gold sun-discs.)

Jack, using his peculiar talent to force killer’s hands at the cost of others, figured closing the exhibit would be a good start. A week later and Will got a call that there had been a botched kidnapping of a girl who had not been to the exhibit, but might have looked like one who was. She was dropped off in the woods tied up and naked, to die of exposure. A hiker found her a day later, hypothermic and all screamed out. Another day of hospitalization and Jack deemed her ready to give an interview. There were lives to save, after all.) Both Will and the girl complied.

In his study and by firelight, Hannibal read a book of Italian poems translated into Will’s native English. The flames roiled in the red of Lecter’s eyes, in the aura of light and heat. The nature of translation was such that poems shifted slightly every time, like blood spatter, like cigarette smoke; the words would find new and sharp ways to writhe between your ribs, and he enjoyed the cutting sensations.

The phone rang, another little razor-slick of delight.

“Can I come over?” Will asked, his voice pitching only a little.

“You need never ask.”

Will was over in ten minutes; was already on his way when it occurred to him to call. He did not knock—rude, lovely boy—and came right in, calling for Hannibal, glasses on and slightly fogged. 

Lecter took his jacket, smoothed his hair. Will smelled of frost and sweat and rain, and he kissed his forehead, more proprietary with his touch now. Hannibal guided Will into the sitting room, where he (in anticipation) had baked Anjou pear and cinnamon and brie warm and waiting. 

Will talked of nothing, at first, dancing around what had happened. He was trembling with anger at himself; his body vibrated like a plucked string.

(And Hannibal was startled anew by just how much he wanted Will Graham. All of him. Stabs of hunger, curving through his ribs and gut and cock and heart, every day, only briefly sated.)

(He would remember this feeling the next time it gnawed and scraped; only finding nourishment in the sight of her, wondering if she could ever see through the bars of his plight and ache the same, for him.)

(Will at least, he knew, ached.)

The whole story spilled out of Will, like a deluge. She had been awful, he said, sadly, just one more in a string of indistinguishable young women. Couldn’t remember a thing; didn’t want to talk at all, just wanted to cry and gasp as if the worst thing ever to happen to her was ligature marks and a bad scare.

Will rubbed his own wrists when he said this.

He had lashed out at her during the interview; tore her open for being useless. Called her dull, and her sniveling rude. Told her she should have died so at least she could have provided them with something useful. 

“And, well,” he trailed off. “Worse. Much worse.”

“The killer’s words in your mouth,” Hannibal observed, dipping his spoonful of cinnamon and pear into the soft sweet cheese in the glass bowl. 

(They were not the killer’s words bleeding from Will’s mouth, of course, not the killer he sought now; they came from closer to home.)

The secret to Hannibal’s expressions was watching his mouth instead of his eyes; the way his wide and shallow and over-fed lips quirked, amused.

“Not exactly, though,” Will said, taking too large a bite, tonguing the melting textures and warm cinnamon before he continued. “But who—what—he wishes he was. Some sort of,” and he laughed, bitterly, “god. God. I don’t know.”

He looked down at his own glass bowl, wet-on-wet patterns of cheese and fruit and spice where it wasn’t scraped clean. His shoulders were hunched. There was no secret to Will Graham’s expressions; he carried it all in his eyes.

Will looked up at Hannibal and held his gaze.

This was an invitation.

He was warm and tasted like cinnamon and sun, his tongue slick with juice and sugar.

Later in the evening, Hannibal continued reading, with Will drowsing, head in his lap. 

“Read to me,” Will demanded.

Hannibal complied, in his smoky clipped tones:

“If Love it’s not, O God, what feel I so? If Love it is, what sort of thing is he? If it is in my own delight I burn, from where then comes my wailing and complaint? Oh living death, oh sweet harm strange and quaint! How can this harm and death so rage in me, Unless I do consent that it so be?”

Will closed his eyes, too tightly.

The book was gone along with Will by morning.

\--

Winter—snow and ice. Hannibal enjoyed winter; he liked how the starkness set off sensory input even more profoundly. He enjoyed seeing Will come out of the cold, to see blood on the surface of skin, flushed and freezing, like frosted roses. He enjoyed the ice twisting trees—organic forms tortured silently into beautiful submission.

The girl was beautiful too, but in a dull and pallid way that did not interest him. Her terrible voice, however, interested him very much. The way she had butchered Dido with her obvious and overblown stylings; the way she had used her parents’ connections to steal the role of Medee.

Hannibal Lecter was extremely handsome in a severe way. As with all his superlative qualities he knew this was a weapon.

On one night when Will was off chasing his killer, Hannibal and the young lady finished one course and two glasses of wine. 

She was easily angled over the table and her voice box crushed with a wet crunch like a chambered beetle. 

He knocked her unconscious to tie her; when she woke and attempted to scream (still a more palatable sound than her singing, Lecter thought, irritated) she had been tied on a more suitable sort of table in his basement. Moving his hand from her stomach over her ribs and breast, he used her useless throat as an anchor as he stabbed the knife in, to run up her abdomen and crack open her ribcage. 

Her skin was hot even under his plastic gloves. So was her blood. She didn’t die until he severed her heart.

He stuffed her in a cello case and left her in the orchestra’s storage unit for instruments needing repair.

He cooked the heart for Will (heart tartare required much, much finer ingredients), and kissed him between courses, to taste surprised and smiling lips sweet with another’s heart.

“Heart, Hannibal, really? Isn’t that a little, um, gauche, would you say?”

“For luck,” he said, taking his seat. “Catching your killer.”

“Is a heart a common emblem of luck?”

“Of my affection, then.”

Will scoffed, but his next bite was far larger than might usually be considered polite.

“I’ll catch him soon,” he said to him later, close to sleep, hand at rest on Hannibal’s hipbone. “The heart-eater. I’m so close.”

Despite Will’s usual preference, Hannibal pulled him closer, and after a few sleepy protestations he obeyed, nestling against him, and there he slept.

Lecter perched his chin above his head, rubbing the younger man’s shoulders and back absently. He himself did not sleep that night.

—

Will caught a heart-eater—the one he knew he was looking for. The furtive man; the curator’s assistant. Treated himself as a god; sacrificed to his own banal needs. It was a rough chase from what Hannibal understood. They caught him outside, at night, at the scene of the crime. At least Freddie Lounds got some good pictures out of it.

As soon as he could, Will ran to the doctor exhausted, chilled through to the predawn temperature he returned in. 

Hannibal fed him, tsked over his damp and freezing clothes, drew him a bath. He kneeled behind him in the tub, massaging his shoulders and scalp and chest as he sighed and drowsed in the heat and steam of the water. Lecter’s shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows; he leaned Will’s soaked and sleepy head back against his chest. The water sopped scalding then cold down his shirt and chest.

“Come with me to the opera,” he murmured against Will’s cheek.

Will laughed, a short exhalation. “Punishment or reward?”

Hannibal cradled his head. The steam and oil from the bath hung heavy in his throat. “You will enjoy yourself; I promise.”

“Dr. Lecter. I have one good jacket and it is tweed. And it is not so good, in fact. Which you know. Because you’ve told me as much.”

“Let me take care of that.”

Will reached his hand back; twisted to kiss him.

It was quite something to know Will Graham in private life.

—

Will’s clothes never quite seemed to fit him through his hunched stance, defensive demeanor. Always laboring not to be seen.

Tonight he would be seen. He would be seen with Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal had had a suit ordered for some time, he told him, acting embarrassed, just for such an occasion. Will scoffed--he always scoffed at such attention--but came over early to dress, nonetheless.

Hannibal dressed him with the same quick and doting, calculated care he used when preparing a meal. He smoothed his shoulders, straightened him, all while softly smiling at his creation. He gently but firmly adjusted his posture with his hands; Will was well-used to responding to and obeying his touch by then.

He did not bother to mask his delight in calculated perusal of his young man before they left to house. (Tonight; Medee in the original French.) He bit softly on the inside of his lower lip as he smoothed Will’s shoulders and adjusted his tie, as Will shrugged and smiled, looked down and away.

They arrived early at the opera, by design. Will was not unfamiliar with this world but he did find it overwhelming—the nature of these spectacles being performative identity on and offstage. Foyers in white stone; the thrum of voices. Women in gold and red and jewelry like blooms and thorns; too much, too large, too glittering. Men sleek and smiling. Flowers everywhere and already dying.

At first Will tried to keep to himself, to hide behind Hannibal. (Will did enjoy watching him in his own element, charming and preening with his fine friends and suit and glass of wine.)

But Hannibal liked fine things and he liked displaying fine things even more—every aspect of his life refined and reconstituted narrative. 

He brought him forward and led him by light but definite pressure on his elbow. He gently boasted of Will even as he smoothed over his faux pas, even as he beamed at him as much as he ever did (eyes crinkling as he smiled). Will always felt hooked through, stabbed, when all of Lecter’s attention was on him; it was odd to experience this in a crowd.

As they took their seats Hannibal explained how notoriously difficult the role of Medee was. It required occupying a very specific, lushly violent, passionately insane headspace. “Which is,” he said neutrally, “such a rare gift; exceptional.”

Will scoffed. He also took the doctor’s hand furtively, too quickly, squeezing too hard before retracting too fast.

It was fifteen minutes after the performance was meant to start but hadn’t that the well-behaved crowd began to rustle and hum. 

A man stepped onstage with a quickness surprising for his large frame. He blinked into the lights, and both of them could see past his studied smile into the bright fear crackling under his skin. He politely apologized for the delay, saying that curtain would rise shortly and Medee would be played by her understudy. 

Will looked to him to gauge how usual this sort of thing was; the doctor’s face was blank except for a slight uptick of his lips. His eyes were hooded and heavy as though he had just fed, or fucked.

“It’s quite all right,” Hannibal assured him. “I know the performer; she is quite exceptional.”

Will’s phone buzzed as the lights went dark. Jack. He managed to fumble it off before the overture started, grimacing at the message.

The curtains opened to a wide stage of white spaces and spare lines, all clean and flowing and expansive like billowing white curtains. The characters moved in their stable and delineated world; clear and glittering as the notes they sang hanging in the air like fresh water reflecting sun in gold basins.

But Medee was about a woman slowly losing her mind from pain, who discovers it is in her own nature to kill what is most precious to her, and even from the overture the storm of strings churned, and rose in cruel and angry crescendo--

And soon the music lurched and pitched, with cellos like heartbeats and adrenaline violins, as Medee’s world closed in on her, as it bled and dissolved into chaos, as her lover and her children, her sources of love and joy and stability became the very things which devoured her.

At first Will thought it was his imagination--because he was prone to such flights, because something already felt wrong about the evening--but as time went on, as Medee and the music dissolved into stormy dark, the set degenerated right along with her and became darker and smaller. The spatter chamber of her own mind was echoed and expressed in the shrinking stage, in the bloody glass-shard arias, all screaming wounds in Will’s own head.

He tried to stop what he was seeing, close his eyes to block it out, as Medee sang of a monstrous torment that devoured her.

As the music and pain lurched and pitched, he was capsized--and he saw Medee (himself) with the suffocating torture of her love, and Medee’s children (himself) crying, pleading not to die by their mother’s knife, not realizing it was because of, not in spite of who they were that they had to die.

And then Will’s own head, his own madness, his brutal conflations of lust. Girls on antlers. Hearts in mouths.

And Hannibal Lecter.

And wanting to pull the world apart to savor it, and reconstitute everything in it to shapes and tastes most pleasing.

Everything. Everyone.

(The text from Jack--the girl without the heart in the cello case. 

Her heart. 

His heart. His heart, that Hannibal had pulled out while he lay under him, to coldly eat with his beautiful hands and beautiful mouth, while Will could do nothing but watch.

And the men and women on slabs, last week in West Virginia and two thousand years ago two thousand miles away--

It was only to whom you love that you offer your heart to devour; you do this willingly. 

You let them kill you.)

He gasped; when he opened his eyes the stage was blurry from tears, and all he could feel was the surge of blinding-hot panic and shame so strong he wondered the rest of the audience couldn’t feel it blaring and bleeding on them unchecked and acidic.

Medee was onstage alone and covered in blood by the time Will stumbled over almost everyone that lay between him and the exit.

After a moment of consideration, weighing rudeness, Hannibal followed him, stumbling over no one.  
He found him on the balcony, gulping in the cold night air, staring at his cell phone.

Hannibal stopped slightly behind him, to watch him look out at the glittering city and trembling, so Will couldn’t see how much Hannibal loved seeing him unspool. He had hoped the show would drive WIll shivering and embarrassed into his arms; this was better.

“Jack’s been calling,” he said, too lightly. “Guess they found the Medee we were supposed to see. Not alive and well. To say the least.”

“Are you quite all right, Will,” was all he said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Will turned, to look him over with darkened eyes, working his jaw. He stared unfocused into the night. The lights of the city so bright there were no stars.

“I’ve…I’ve been thinking about Petrarch,” Will says. “The one you read to me. I read it myself.” Sometimes, words seemed to escape him in spite of himself. His lips twisted around the words, smiling and jerking just barely under control. His rhotics and vowels caught and pooling through his teeth like water through gravel. “I took your book.”

Hannibal was silent. “Which part?”

He turned away, repeating slowly, half to himself--

“If I do consent, why do I still complain? I am at sea, tossed as the winds contend, in a rudderless boat, with neither compass nor chart. I don’t know these waters or even the course I intend to follow. I observe as my own brain issues absurd commands to my...” he spoke louder, in a normal tone. “My mutinous heart.”

“Are you speaking of your work?”

Will laughed, crazily, running both hands through his dark hair, turning to glare at Lecter with eyes bright with moisture. “Yes,” he hissed, sarcastic. “I am definitely talking about my work. Not you, certainly. Not what you’ve done to me. Not what you are to me. Not what I want; what I cannot help but want.”

Lecter’s mouth twitched at Will’s admission of knowledge, crumpled indelicately in with an admission of love. He thought of the weapons he had at hand and at home. He feigned ignorance. “Your desires are not so absurd, Will--you are still trying to escape the world you inhabit, dark though it is.”

“Sometimes I feel I’ll never see the sun again,” he said, before his face went sad. “I’m sorry about the performance. I know it was--” he laughed, a short exhalation--”rude. But seeing everything go so—and then my own world--” 

He tried to laugh, a heartbreaking sound. 

“My world,” Will drawled, turning to the other man, staring at the curve of his cheekbone. “It’s becoming lusher. More visceral and dark.” His gaze, cold and sad, met Lecter’s. “It’s becoming yours.”

“What do you mean, Will?” His eyes were glittering, swallowing up the lights from the city in sparks.

“You know what I mean.”

Hannibal cocked his head. “And is that such a terrible thing?”

“No,” he said quietly. “It is so--it is so much worse than I could ever have imagined.” He swallowed. His face jerked into a horrific smile as he feigned laughter, as he covered his face with his hands to run them back through his hair. “Her heart, Hannibal,” he continued, and all his defensiveness was gone, and he was laid bare. “My heart. Oh god, my heart. How could you.”

“Why,” he asked quietly, grateful that Will had had the grace to not be explicit so he could wait a while longer, “are you telling me this?”

He laughed. “Why, Dr. Lecter,” he said, looking the other man over until Hannibal opened his arms and beckoned for him. He obeyed, resting his head against Hannibal’s lapel. “Who else would I tell?” 

Will pulled back, and blank-faced, leaned in to kiss him hard and tense-lipped. Aggressively.

Like before, it was an invitation. 

This time it was also a challenge.

Hannibal felt it in the red of his eyes, churning like hellish little suns.

 

\--

The car ride home was silent. Will answered Jack’s text (“I’m gonna tell Jack I’ll be there tomorrow morning,” he lied, unnecessarily); fumbled to put his phone away in his unfamiliar jacket. His face wan under streetlights; the shadows pooling in the hollows in his sad, sweet face.

He looked at Hannibal. He extended a hand as if to touch his jaw, but retracted.

It had started to rain, and the liquid shadows were lovely in Will’s eyes, and the dark of his suit blended into the dark interior of the car and the fluid nighttime. The windshield wipers were a pendulum; a heartbeat.

Hannibal Lecter considered a number of possible options.

\--

The last time Hannibal Lecter penetrated Will Graham was with a knife.

He had barely opened the front door when Will pushed past him without a sound. He kicked off his shoes as he walked straight to the bedroom.

Hannibal locked the bedroom door behind them, the first time he had ever done so.

Will was there to crash him against the door, to pull his head to him by his hair, to kiss him with all the desperation of the drowning, of the murderous. They quickly found a starving sort of rhythm, trading dominance, biting and pulling and gasping as they undressed each other.

He arched back his head to offer his perfect throat as Hannibal bent his head to it. It was a peculiar gesture of submission and invitation and would be his undoing.

They had all the time in the world if all the time was right now.

Will Graham was strong. Hannibal Lecter was stronger. With a snarl he pushed Will onto the bed, pulling him to his hands and knees by his hair. He dug his fingers down and into his smooth muscled back, his beautiful skin, his spine, to claw finally into his hips. He fucked him—deep steady brutal thrusts, snapping his hips and driving into Will as the younger man clawed at the sheets, at Hannibal’s hands when he anchored himself on his shoulder or ran his hands down his stomach to his cock.

Will gasped and groaned, nonsensically: “I don’t—I want—I don’t. Fuck. Oh god. Why do I.”

“Why? Your mutinous heart,” Hannibal hissed back, thrusting in particularly deep and vicious and earning a strangled shout.

He was as taken aback at the beauty of Will Graham in ecstatic pain under his hands, muscles pulling under golden skin like sunlight flickering on water, as he was by his own dumb intoxication at the sight; he was lost. 

He pulled him up on his knees to press his chest against his back, to press his hand against Will’s ribcage and firm chest and furious heartbeat, to stroke and pump his cock with his hand as Will moaned, short and sharp. “And why,” Hannibal growled into his neck, his accent growing harsher and more sibilant, “do you still complain? My boy. My beautiful boy.”

Hannibal Lecter loved as a god loved; completely. Destroying and reforming and devouring. His will, he thought, his Will.

He pulled away so he could turn him around. Will could be fierce as Lecter when he chose, and he lunged, forcing him down on the mattress as he climbed to straddle him. He ran his hand possessively, speculatively, over Hannibal’s chest, over his heart, raking down to grasp his cock. He stroked before he guided it into himself, to sink down on it with a sharp grunt, with closed eyes and open lips and shallow breaths.

The absolute surrender in his face overwhelming; Hannibal grasped Will’s hips to thrust hard and vicious and sudden to elicit another pained cry and arched back and gritted teeth.

No sooner did they find a rhythm than Hannibal lifted himself to sit, cradling him, clawing at him as Will took his sharp face in his hands and kissed him, pressed his face in his neck to bite and curse and beg.

“Remarkable boy,” he said, and the words came out of his mouth without his complete assent, like when Will spoke. Like blood spitting from a wound; they hurt. “My beautiful remarkable boy,” he whispered, kissing his skin, scraping teeth, increasing the speed and intensity with which he worked his cock. “My Will.”

Will was undone with a cry, his come sputtering hot against them both. Hannibal pushed him on his back as the depleted young man clung to his arms and legs for balance; his anchor.

As Hannibal lost what little control he had left, Will took his face in his hands. His bright light eyes were occluded and dark, and wet with exertion.

“I see,” he whispered, his voice hitching. “I see how you see me. And I—oh, but I see you too, Hannibal, I see you.”

Hannibal squeezed Will’s throat as he came with a cry.

Will Graham loved as a god loved; completely, offering his whole heart. At enormous cost and far beyond the bounds of Hannibal Lecter’s experience--thus far. An offering himself.

Understanding that neither would leave the other’s sight again, they shower, they dress. The air was warm and cloying. Time was slow, and as Will lay on the bed he felt almost sick from anticipation, like when Lecter had first tied his hands and kneeled between his legs. He had time to check his phone, if he chose to, or to pull out a hidden gun from the folded pile of the clothes he arrived in and hide it under a pillow, while Hannibal himself quietly pulled a linoleum knife from a cabinet. 

When Hannibal leant over him, brushing back his hair, pinning him by the shoulder, stabbing him, Will understood. (It was his curse to understand because of the double-edged nature of that weapon.) Hannibal’s own knife was curved, and carved new arced lines in him, to reform and reconstitute his lovely warm skin. 

Will couldn’t push him away, so he wrapped his arms around him.

Willingly.

And Hannibal himself felt gutted as he pushed the knife in deep, penetrating, as Will’s body shuddered around the blade and went numb and calm from shock. He sliced, around and down, through skin and muscle and gut, carving with as much care and precision and tender brutality as he had always shown him. 

“I do admire your courage,” he murmured, as Will gasped, as he sputtered blood. “I think I’ll eat your heart,” he says, as if he hadn’t already.

And he was so concerned with the lovely smell and taste of Will’s blood that he did not notice he had himself been shot until he saw the blood spatter (beautifully) on Will’s face.

They came soon after that; breaking down the door. Hannibal felt a profound and almost unprecedented pain as the medics carried him out that cannot be accounted for by the critical gunshot wounds or shock. He felt freezing and strange and aching—he felt he had lost the heart that kept his blood coursing, that it had been carved out and eaten.

The last he saw of his bedroom was Will, seeping his life out on their bed. He wondered, for an indulgent second before he lost consciousness himself, whether the blood staining Will’s mouth and teeth was from Hannibal’s own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you like Hannibal? Do you like to talk about Hannibal? 
> 
> So do I say hello to me at lipstickmata on tumblr.
> 
> And not to sound like Cecil talking about Carlos here (although I admit to similar levels of worshipful enthusiasm) but my beta tiredteaspoons (ALSO ON TUMBLR FOLLOW HER) is an actual real-life genius and goddess and just general phenomenon of a person. This wouldn't have been written without her.


	5. Offering: Gulveig

III.III SALVAGE

  
As he cooks, the light and warmth inside the kitchen against the window glass renders the outside a cold reflective void.

Hannibal prefers curtains—the sight of his severe face’s reflection in the implacable black could still cut—but he is not in his own home.

The light inside his cell rendered his glass barrier a dark mirror, with only his dim reflection seeming to stare from the outside—a version of him phantom and free. In the glass his sharpest features registered and he was a skull superimposed over ice. Only his pronounced lips would give him away as anything that might beat blood and starve, in this entire blue stone mirrored world that was one room.

“Watch the mouth,” Barney warned every new guard before they entered Lecter’s cell of blue stone and glass. They’d take the barest meaning, as they gave Lecter wide berth, affixing his foul mask of leather and iron. When they entered his bare space Hannibal had to steel himself against the searing stink of them—the vending machine’s oily salt, the furtive liquor, the bad bitter coffee.

(He did enjoy the astringent fear they soaked into the room)

Behind the glass he was Rilke’s beast, with all that time and only and always the light and stone and lonely doubling glass. He tasted every flavor of hunger, forced to recall through stabs in his gut that an absence could pierce so thoroughly as to be a presence in its own right. When Will or Clarice stood before him, unmoved by his aching—

He starved once more.

When he slept, Hannibal stretched his long lean frame on the thin mattress. The support bars dug stripes like scars into his back.

His mind betrayed him nightly. Sleep plated and served him too-rich visions of heat and teeth, of bodies yielding and bodies resisting. It was when he jolted awake, gasping, that his face stretched with pain seemed only delicate straight bone in the glass, no lips to mar it.

Hannibal longed for him, his beast-as-prey, who shared his empathy and who would dissolve gasping under him. How he would sleep with one hand resting on Hannibal as a kind of anchor. Hannibal ached for her, his prey-as-monster, who shared his understanding and who understood everything, even surrender, as a kind of power. How she would cling to him desperate like something to be saved from slaughter.  Sweet Will, his drunken sunlit boy. How the scars must jerk and dance across his face like sunlight on water and how Hannibal’s own mark must grin around his ribcage. Brave Clarice, his harsh winter girl, and the gunpowder rasped forever into her high cheekbone next to her soft down-turned eyes.

(Or sometimes he would be betrayed when awake, remembering the last time he had been locked starving in a small cold space. Little pearls of baby teeth in a swirl of frozen shit. And he would fumble to grasp the edge of his flimsy chrome table as his mouth twisted.)

He thought of them often. He chewed on these thoughts until there was no sustenance left.

Even when free, after nightfall in his new rooms of light and space and air he might jar a note on his piano that would carry off discordant into the vaulted dark. He would feel cold chewing through his fine suits though the fire would be lit. And he would pause and purse his lips and stare into the flame.

It soon lost its fascination, this hunger only sharpened by the feeding of it.

III.IV RECONSTITUTION

When they met again Lecter was bound cruciform and Starling stood before him curved and small, blue eyes burning.

It had been eight years since their last conversation; it would be some weeks before their next lucid one. When he pierced her it was with a needle and not a knife, and to save her life. Hannibal gave her, as always, his full and precise attention—breathing rate, eye movement, heartbeat—that he had translated into a profession several times over.

He wondered if Will thought how Hannibal had spared his life; if the thought hurt, lancing along his long scar. He made sure Clarice felt nothing.

After the danger was over Lecter dressed her in soft grey pajamas and tucked her into bed. Her hair sprawled messy and dark against the pale sheets.

Hannibal gave her, as always, his full and consuming attention—the hitch of breath and flutter of eyelid, the flush of gently beating blood under her soft skin—as he indulged herself, reaching a hand out to smooth her hair and touch her cheek.

When conscious, his former Agent Starling thought she had to earn any pleasure. Like Will’s petulance, it amused him. Sleeping, though, she softly moaned and leaned into his touch and Hannibal could not help but bend his head to hers, to press his lips against her cheek and breathe in his once-lost girl.

For some days their whole world was again one small room, with cool blue walls and white down bedding, and darkness. Hannibal sat and watched her as she recovered. He considered his longing to tear into her. He considered all the ways he might do this and also keep her.

Clarice woke to his face that she had seen more frequently in dreams than in waking—his slicked back hair, his high cheekbones, the curious and inhuman stillness of him. She treated him as though he were a dream; she stretched and grinned and reached out a hand thoughtlessly to the scrape of his cheek.

“You’re always…” she murmured, drifting, still drugged.

He covered her small hand in his. “Always what, Clarice?”

“Always…over me, eating at…” she sighed, and closed her eyes, and forgot.

When they started having conversations, Hannibal spoke to her in the soft smoke of his voice and picked her apart. Like before she would slice off and offer up bits of her heart—but this time, with no thought of barter. She even gave up the toughest knots for him to cut up with his words like a blade into more pleasing shapes for the both of them.

The small warm room was dominated by dark and whispers; the sun-warm honey and undercurrent of mint in her tea lingered in the air. The only points of violence were the two bright points of his red eyes hanging like puncture wounds in the soft black and in the certain hungry way Clarice would smile at him.

***

The green dress he had chosen for her had poured through her fingers like water when she picked it up from the bed, and combined with her gun on her thigh felt like a kind of armor. As Clarice walked down the hall the notes from his harpsichord plucked gold at the air. She felt strangely light, like she was covering huge distances with every step.

Hannibal’s playing jarred to a stop as he saw her. Harpsichord notes do not carry and so she heard him inhale.

She noted how his lips parted.

Watch the mouth, they had told Clarice all those years ago, showing her the well-handled photos of what he had used it for—ripped faces, swallowed tongues. They might have shown her others had they been clever. Brilliant Will Graham cut up and bled to nothing. He had shattered Abigail Hobbs like a teacup. He had crippled Alana Bloom and crushed Crawford’s heart. It was not difficult for her to reconcile those photos dark with spurting blood with the shock of the too-heavy curl of lip against Dr. Lecter’s otherwise haughty face.

Clarice sat the only audience at the visceral theater of his dinner table, framed tonight by explosions of white flowers. She ate who was served and did not miss the twitch of smile he tried to tense away.

After dinner when they sat in front of the fire, as the sweet pale notes of the white whine harmonizing with the bitter thrum of coffee—well.

(“Do you think I wonder how you might taste?” he had asked her, never asking if she wondered the same thing about him.)

She looked down at him, ran her fingers through his coarse light hair. She could have what she wanted.

***

  
Only when he kissed her at the threshold of the bedroom; only when Clarice pulled him to her so quickly she slammed the door shut with the weight of them did she really consider what she was doing.

It could have been the needle, the wine, the red of his eyes—whatever it was, she couldn’t seem to touch enough of him at once. If her hands were steady it was only because of her firearms training. He was lean and warm under the soft thin fabric of his shirt and trousers and his wand was broad at her back pulling her to him, the other arm balancing against the wall.

Hannibal had always been so still, so fucking still and poised and calculated and loved her revenge in how he kissed her with so little tenderness and so much hunger. She only barely remembered to breathe as he pressed his lips down her neck wet and panting, as she felt the hardness of him against her stomach.

As if sensing her delight he pulled away, examining her. Hannibal held her still, only a small shine of tooth showing.

He let one of his hands, blunted and strong, drop from her face down her collarbone to rest on her heart—and Clarice added to his list of atrocities how an electric wake from his touch shot straight down.

Starling was used to denying herself. Sometimes this was humility but more often it was a strict and channeled control. But as she met his gaze gone hot and occluded like coals she couldn’t remember why she had ever bothered denying herself anything at all.

His lip curled, showing the sharp and tangled teeth so often hidden behind his soft precise words—just as much a conceit as his fine clothes and manners; the monster he was always under seal and cover of those wicked lips. 

  
(“So ambitious,” he had teased her, but they both knew ambition and hunger were close in flavor.)

Clarice reached out to cradle his his face, her thumb tracing his mouth while her heart pounded under his hand. Watch the mouth, they had told her, and she had—

He jerked his head to nip at her thumb, to tongue and taste, and it was only when she whimpered that he released to lean and kiss her. Hannibal smiled at the way Clarice went as tense from arousal as from rage and he devoured the way she strained against him as if she needed to fight.

At the bed he peeled off her dress to pour quick and liquid against the floor. The air was cold but she only complained when he sat her on the bed while he undressed. She only wore her gun.

Hannibal knelt before her, eyes on hers. He ran his rawbone hands slowly up her thighs, parting them, his fanned hands pressing hard into her flesh and Clarice felt she had toppled backwards off a tall bridge and had not yet reached the water. She wanted to reach out and pull him onto and into her, but kept still.

He smirked when he reached the black metal of her gun against her soft thigh. After he unhooked the holster and slid the gun away she almost spoke until he pressed his lips strangely reverent to where the gun had sat warmed by her blood, to savor.

“Clarice,” he said, and the vibration of his voice against her thigh made her arch her hips, made her shudder a breath. “I do not wish—are you certain, this is what you want?” Hannibal’s way of showing concern with his mourner’s face was to seem mildly heartbroken; as he looked up at her now he seemed devastated.

 _Fuck his fucking manners_ , thought Clarice, and _fuck this cruelty as tenderness, of course he’s actually gonna make me say it._

She hissed in frustration. _Yes, you fuck._ “Yes, Doctor,” she said, please, yes, please.”

(“Please, Doctor, please,” she had begged, before.)

A flash of teeth and she was pushed roughly back on the bed. His hand tangled in her hair to hold her down; when she finally grasped the hard length of him she was rewarded with a groan and closed eyes.

And then his hand pushed hers away and slipped between her legs and it was hard to think at all.

Lecter wouldn’t let her touch him at first, instead intent on mapping her responses: how she arched and gasped as he entered her with rough manicured fingers; how she clawed at his muscled back as he moved to her clit; how all she could do was hold onto the sheets as he discovered an exact rhythm.

How when she came it was with a cry like a plea.

Still in the oblivion of orgasm when he entered her, smooth and slow (she was wet enough, certainly, and still in aftershocks) she still caught how he trembled, how he moaned something into her ear in a tongue she did not understand. Clarice wrapped a leg around him to arch him in deeper and for her trouble got teeth hard at the junction of her neck and shoulder as he fucked her.

She never quite got her whole consciousness back from her climax and his slow brutal rhythm and constant flow of whispered words rocked her like being tumbled in waves; she can never quite right herself, never quite come up for air. He is heavy and implacable over her and her only choice is to hold on, to claw into his back and shoulders as he whispers how she is to him and the only thought she could hold in her head was how, melted down and reforged, she had never felt more known.

The flow of words soon stopped as her hands slipped across his slick skin; hie breathing became more ragged, his eyes dark, his lips slack and jutting. “Clarice,” he says only, “my Clarice,” in his voice like smoke and rust—the cruelest thing he could say and still be truthful.

Her name burst out long and bright: blood from a fresh wound. Clarice’s eyes widened at the taste of it. She clawed him closer as if she were angry.

“My Hannibal,” she said, low and cruel into his ear, and his guttural cry as he came was harsh against the low blue thrum of rain at the windowsill.

***

Hannibal woke the first time when the rain stopped to Clarice curled warm against him, at peace in the silence.

The second time he woke when the dawn slashed through the heavy curtain. He rose and dressed, slipping outside to dispose of last night’s meal. The wet earth of the new grave caked on his shoes. The body landed with a thump, the wheelchair clattering in after. The depth of the hole would keep the larger animals at bay until they were gone.

He made her coffee and breakfast and did not drug her again till evening. He wondered who would take her from him when the time came—himself, someone who hunted them. Or Clarice herself.

You can only run so far and so long.

***

 The residual chemical stench abraded the air of the bedroom; Clarice had only washed her hair twice since bleaching it the previous day.

She was at the vanity when Hannibal returned. He placed her new passport beside her without a word.  The passport had been expertly made to look used: the stiff paper ragged at the edges, the false visa stamps faded, off-center, occasionally stained.    She picked it up and flipped through it with a grin. “Always wanted one of these,” she said, “but I always kind of visualized my own name in it.”  She caught his eye in the mirror.  “Hannah, huh?”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“You think you’re so funny,” she laughed.  “That’s how I found you, you know.  The fact that you always think you are so funny.”

He tilted his head.  “I knew you had a certain affection for the name,” he said simply, smiling.  “You can choose the next one.”  If there was a next one; he hoped there was.

“Then I get to choose yours too. Probably be from an eighties boy band.”

“Seems only just.”

He had already packed for them both.  Out of politeness he had offered her the option but she had laughed and reminded him she “only had a little taste, remember?”  He had demurred but had not pressed the point.

They would be chased and hunted but it was not yet something they had discussed in detail.

Clarice was doing a fair job of masking her nervousness for the flight in the afternoon. Her mask slipped when Hannibal reminded her gently that she was a natural runner, that she would take to the the life well.  Still, as she returned to her own reflection she moved slower.  The brand of cosmetic he had chosen for her mixed their powders with rosewater and the scent puffed in the air as she twirled a black brush aimlessly on her cheek.  With her newly pale hair and dark blue eyes, the mark on her cheek stod out even more.

Hannibal caught her gaze in the mirror and his brow knit.  He reached to cup her face with his broad hand, his thumb rubbing affectionately over the mark.

As she sank slightly into his touch he was reminded how tense she constantly held herself. Always on guard, his little warrior.

“Much as it pains the both of us, you shall have to cover this.” The hair that fell over his hand to her shoulder was still rough from its treatment.

“I know,” she said.  “And I will.  But--Dr. Lecter.  Hannibal.  No one is looking for me.”  She uncapped the concealer, hard enough so that it came off with a sharp pop.

Such a delicious depth of pain accidentally spilling--he leaned in to kiss the top of her head.  “Even so.”

Clarice dabbed at her face harder than she needed to, the liquid thick like congealing blood.  “Guess I should have taken care of it for real at some point.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Never got round to it,” she said, and laughed at his silence.  She shared with Will the tendency to laugh through pain, the catch in her voice and pull at the corner of her mouth only visible if one were looking.  “Or, really, I didn’t want to.  It felt a part of me.  Crawf--um, I got told it was in the place for courage, so I liked that too, I guess.”

Hannibal pursed his lips.  “Do you recall what William Blake said about corrosive marks?”

“Mmm.  Remind me.”  Her drawl surfaced most when she was sarcastic.

He stroked her cheek.  “He considered marks made by corrosives or burning to be more pure and more true, as they melt apparent surface away and display the truth underneath.  I would posit this is the case here, a burn that marks you for what is in your heart.”

Surprised, Clarice paused and smiled at him (a corrosive method in its own right) before setting the paste on her cheek with powder.

Suddenly, though, she stopped--and when she spoke her voice was higher and more calm than usual.  “It wasn’t--wasn’t just that, of course, which you know.”  She grabbed his hand on her shoulder.  Her hands were much smaller than his but she grasped hard enough to hurt, squeezing his knuckles to grate against each other.  “I felt--hmm.  After we met, I never quite felt the same.”  She took a breath; he watched her breath rise and fall.  “Or rather--you never seemed to leave me.  You were always in my mind, somewhere.  Running in my blood it seemed, sometimes.  Ha.  Sounds silly, I know.  But does that make sense?”  She squeezed harder.  “Is that possible?”

Unlike Will she was not consumed by her pain but could hold it outside of and away from herself, to be examined and conquered, to be given to him to devour.

He bent her head back to kiss her, ruining her lipstick.

“How is that possible,” she repeated softly.

“I will tell you someday,” he promised.

It was January and bleak and grey outside.  Their footsteps crunched in the few inches of snow.  She was wearing dark leather gloves and a fitted coat; Hannibal was dressed as unobtrusively as possible with his face altered by cosmetics.

When he opened the car door for Clarice he took the back of her arm gently, as if to help her in.

Quick as anything, quick as he, she grabbed the wrist of his hand holding the loaded syringe.

“Don’t worry, H, ain’t nothing you’re bringing out that’s not there already,” was all she said.

Her lips were a shock of red against her teeth.  Her cheek was pale and bare.

 ***  

Clarice was almost disappointed when the only people paying them mind at the airport were the ones looking them over, bored and peckish.  On the plane, she read.

Lecter wrote, in a slim black notebook, in a precise and jagged hand, in the German his passport professed him to be.

When he had first met Clarice he had found her charming enough: he saw what she was becoming. He thought of tearing out her throat, or sinking his teeth into her and getting as deep inside as possible before she gave out.  Now his thoughts—once filled on calculations on how to regain Mischa—was crowded by other notes.  In quick cutting letters like knife srokes he considered all the ways he might keep Clarice.

He had chosen a city so choked by the past that time would not catch them up for some time; it was to Paris they flew.

 ***

Hannibal had described  their apartment as a modest flat in the banlieus, and he enjoyed her wide-eyed surprise and enthusiasm at the spacious and well-appointed truth of the place.

They kept separate rooms. While there was a certain warmth to Hannibal Lecter’s preferred decor, it was more the heat of blood than the comfort of hearth.  She shared his liking for space and light, but tended towards minimalism and other stark little sensibilities she would never completely cede to him, no matter how much they bled into one another. And Clarice knew she was both a solitary thing at heart and tended towards the untidy. They rarely slept separately.

One dim night they walked down a narrow road lit with golden streetlights, reflecting off the cobblestones wet with rain.  Clarice still only recalled enough French to be able to let the language wash over her, warm and pleasant, and, enjoying the soft and safe sensation, fell back from her escort when they hit a crush of people.

A rough honey-haired man leaned into her as he passed, going for her purse.  The fugitive couple were down the street and down an alley twenty feet before the man’s head had stopped reeling from the blow.

It was not, they determined, anything more than a poor choice in victim. But the specter of capture turned Clarice stomach and made her retreat to her room, brooding.

Later in the evening, he told Starling he would be away two days on business.  Beyond the initial pride and amusement he felt, Hannibal was grateful for Clarice’s immediate instinct to violence.  The bloom of broken blood vessels on his jaw made the would-be thief easier to track and identify.

Out in the dense wooded spaces, Lecter wove easily and steadily through the trees—it was rarely necessary to run, with one so panicked.  The doctor carried with him a crossbow, knife, and small cooler.  He had missed the countryside, he realized, as he walked.  The privacy.  How screams were swallowed by winding green branches and rushing water.  The open air, and so much life and decay under his feet.  The prey was thumping and wheezing through a difficult stream crossing and it was a simple matter to head him off and hide.

A quick thock of the crossbow to the leg, and the man was down.  Hannibal slid down the leaves onto the bank of the stream, placing the cooler down as the man scrambled back, sobbing, into the water.

He leaned forward and pulled the man quickly to him by the ankles, making sure it was only mud and not fists or blood that landed in his face.  It was fast work to slice the tendons and crush the larynx.

For some moments and with much pleasure Lecter watch his victim splutter and try to run, then crawl, then weep, before he stepped forward to slit the man’s throat.  Hannibal’s knife was good and with practiced strokes he jerked and crunched through the bone and viscera.  The man did not twitch against the blade for very long.

Dusk was already falling and the blood gushed blue-maroon into the stream, dissolving into the burbling rush only a few feet downstream from the source.  The iron smell of it was a steady undertone to the bright of the water.

Hannibal Lecter was an acutely vicious man.

***

He brought out dinner on gilded plates, garnished with bird bone and bound twisted foliage from the forest.  The dish approximated spice-crusted venison medallions, with juniper and gin.  The harsh white tartness of the berries lingered in the air even after one had become accustomed to the savory scent of the meat.

Clarice straightened as he entered the room.  She kept her eyes on him, not the dish.

She had dressed more formally than usual, in a pale dress that clung, and some discreet gold.  When he had given her the necklace, she had teased him about upgrading her add-a-beads.

Hannibal was too delighted with himself not to break the silence after a sip of wine.  “You know, Clarice,” he said.  “I have noticed: in our time together, you have never asked me to modify any of my behaviors to accommodate you.”

“And why should I, Doctor?” Clarice pushed at the garnish with her fork.  Her impolite fascination with the decoration was due no doubt partly to her upbringing.  She did not touch the meat.  “You’re so considerate, after all.”  She was unwinding the juniper with her utensil.  The sprig of sharpness from the crushed leaves almost covered her discomfort.

“It is common when two people begin to live with one another.  A matter of negotiation and compromise.”

“I have, though.  I told you to leave me alone about my taste for crime novels.  And the way I dry dishes.  And my penchant for grocery store flowers.  And I know I’ve told you to pull your head out of—well.”  She paused.  “A few times, come to think.”

He pursed his mouth in a pout. Clarice laughed, but her jaw set tense as he continued:  “You have never bargained with me to stop.”

She grinned strangely, with too many teeth. “What do I have to bargain with?”

The silver of his knife flashed with the wet of the meat as he cut.  “You could offer yourself,” he said calmly, eyes on his plate.

Clarice held still for a moment.  He could feel her eyes, burning, on him.

She exhaled through her nose, before picking up her knife and turning to the meat.  “I’ve already done that, seems to me.  Guess I could offer to take myself away.”  Too clever to look immediately for a reaction, she put a piece of meat in her mouth first.  Her jaw moved as she pressed the meat with the flat of her tongue to enjoy the tenderness of it.

“A very persuasive tactic.”  He would remember the way the shadows shifted on her shoulders as her muscles tensed at his words, ready to go for her weapon.  She sometimes hated when he played psychiatrist.

She curled her lip.  “Would it be, now.  You know—of course you know.  Most people think I ended up on your plate instead of in your bed.  I wonder how much of a difference it is sometimes.”  Another defiant bite.  “Mmm.  What’s this now, venison?  My mom always hated deer.  They’re thieves, she said, they were always stealing and eating all the flowers in our ugly little planters.”

He put his utensils down and waited with a subtle smile.

Clarice tipped her wine glass.  “A joke, Hannibal.  But really,” she said, taking a sip.  “I wonder why you’re asking questions you already know the answer to.

He loved the bite in her voice, how her words seemed to cut her tongue as he pressed.  “I want to hear your answer.  Not mine.”

Biting her lip was a childish habit but he would not point it out.  “Guess it’s a matter of courtesy.  You’ve never asked me to be anything I’m not.  I thought I’d offer you the same thing.”  She paused.  “You really worried about me leaving?”

Hannibal picked up his knife and fork back up and smiled.  “No,” he said, “I am not worried.”

He did not worry about certainties and all he could ever offer Clarice, including his own heart, would forever curl dark and corrupt at the edges.  He did not worry much; he only regretted those hearts he had failed to reconstitute.

“I would starve, without you,” he added, calm and still as ever.

The blow hit, he saw it in how her lips pulled down in a brief grimace.

Hannibal Lecter was and remained a very vicious man.

***

After dinner Clarice returned to her books.  With her usual fierce tenacity she had taken well to the new language.  She would acquire dictionaries and software; she would make him practice with her.  He would leave books in her room.

She especially loved a copy of Dante’s poems he had given her and it was this she worked on, sitting on the couch with her notebooks spread on her lap and black ink in the blunt of her palm.

Hannibal joined her in the room with the same slow implacable purpose he had hunted their dinner. He took the papers gently from her to place on the side table; she let her shirt be pulled off, her shoes, her pants and panties.  He knelt between her legs, propping one up to give himself better access.  Even as she was allowed her entitlements, so was he.

“Told you,” she gasped, some minutes later, one hand in his hair and the other digging scratches into his forearm.  “No difference at all.”

***

One evening Starling left without a word, and did not soon return.  Hannibal was only momentarily intrigued by the pain because it was an old one—a cold liquid lead through his bones which grew colder and heavier with every song he ticked through on his piano. He had hoped the precise evocations of others’ pain would sustain him but instead he only thought of her, his girl, running further and faster and faster as her heart beat to bursting, as he played a measured tempo.

The night felt very cold, like old winters. You could run so long and so far but some things stayed with you always.

She returned the next evening.  Her lips were bright coral around her white even teeth as she leaned in the doorway of their kitchen.   “Oh Doctor,” was all she had said.  “You wouldn’t be happy with me if I didn’t.”

Hannibal took her hand too roughly, and she winced.  His carved face was cold, his eyes dark.

He could twist and snap her wrist.  He could keep her bound to him through any number of well-practiced strategies.  He could keep her chained to his bed, or dizzy with drugs.  He could kill her and keep her perfect in his head.  He could make her kill and make her love it and bind her that way, his brave girl who loved to run.

He often considered all of these things.

Hannibal brought her hand to his mouth, pressing his lips hard into the back of her hand.

  ***

At the museums they wound their separate ways through the high wide halls echoing the welter of traffic—the thump and click of running shoes and heels, indiscriminate talking, the scratches of student’s rough pencilwork.  Clarice would occasionally pull Hannibal to a particular piece and ask him to share the rich rotten dark of his thoughts.  When he did the same to her, he watched her face as she described what she felt, and not the art.

Once, Clarice startled him with a gentle hand at his elbow and a worried look.  He could go completely absent, sometimes, standing like a tall stone with empty eyes.  She had never seen him do this in a public space.

Hannibal had been considering his favorite of the collection’s St. Sebastians, the one he felt best captured the rictus of ecstasy and pain on the lovely young man’s face, as he arched his back bound and pierced and bleeding into the hard bliss of finally receiving what he never knew he desired.

The piece also hung in his memory palace but in a strange wing he did not visit often, anymore, in a room where he could hear sweet cries and where he could taste the copper rasp of blood.  A room that hurt.

“Ah,” he said, placing his hand over hers.  “Forgive me, my dear.  This is St. Sebastian.”

Her dark blue eyes stormed with hurt; whether it was her own or she was swallowing his, was unclear.  “No,” she said.  She reached to brush his hair back into place.  He had not dyed it recently and it was its natural ash and cinder.  “Not for you.”

He knit his brow, feigning confusion.  Clarice pulled him down so she could kiss the rough skin at the hollow of his cheek before continuing on her way, once again her small steely self as she gently pushed through the crowd around a particularly famous painting.

If she noticed the American woman peering strangely at her, as if trying to remember something, she did not let it reflect in her stride. And Paris, he realized, was too full of ghosts in its streets and walls of cream and gold, and he could not keep her safe here and his any longer.

When they returned home she straddled him on the bed, stripping off his shirt, telling him softly to be still.

Clarice ran her hands over his face, and shoulders, arms, and chest.  She did this with the same rapt attention and bitten lip as when reading case files or when she was accomplishing a particularly fluid translation of her Dante.

“This one?” she asked, delineating a long white mark on his deltoid.  Her other hand rested on his chest, which was dusted with black hair.

“A fight,” he told her, “when I was young.”  Her fingers were slim and cool; her lacquered nails smooth and scraping.  He could feel the lines she traced like new cuts.

“This one,” she said, brushing over a dark abrasion at the curve of his ribcage.  It was as old as she was.

“Cooking accident.  An actual cooking accident;” he clarified at her look, “burning oil everywhere.  I was young.”

Clarice laughed.  She laced her fingers through his left hand, stroking the small pock where his sixth finger had been removed.  She shifted on his lap, with intent, and he inhaled as she ran her hands down his chest, firm and possessive over every mark, until she reached the angry knots that the bullets had left.

She paused before ghosting her fingers over them, as if feeling she was testing a boundary.

He took her hand and placed them over the knots; she froze.

“Remember you have had the advantage, Clarice,” he said, “of always knowing me for exactly what I am.”

“You knew the same about me.”

“No.  I knew what you could become.”

She let her weight rest on him, and he shifted to pull her close.  The past bled too much, still, and they could not stay here, either one.

They would have to keep running.

 

***

Clarice and Hannibal escaped far north, to a small cabin surrounded by sea and the rush and slap of waves against the scalloped black rockface.  He liked watching the dark frozen ocean picked up by the hot blue of her eyes.

Terns nested there.

The sun never set above the Arctic circle in the summer and their house in the omnipresent daylight was as good an experiment of living in the present as any—all one bright day, that never ended.

She could run, but only so far.

Starling explored the grounds: the prim cabin of stark grey wood against the white of the sky, the black rock as it faded into a tangled forest.  The dark green of what grew against the slurs of blues of the ocean.

Lecter found her on a far outcropping of rock, the sea spray lashing her hair and stinging her face.  Although he had been silent, she turned slightly at his approach.

(He had teased her she was taking on his sense of smell; she had retorted she could always feel his eyes on her, like knives against her skin, even from a hundred yards.)

She staggered down the rock towards the sea.  From his perspective it looked as if she were sinking into the ground until she slipped and disappeared completely.  He heard the gasp of pain and thump of flesh on wet stone even as the shock of blood reached his nostrils—a bright swirl in the sea air.

He walked closer.  His hair was growing longer that was his preference and it whipped unpleasantly in his face.

Hannibal could see what must have been her goal—a scrape in the rocks where a small infant seabird was beat by waves against the stone.  The parent and siblings swam nearby, unwilling or unable to reach it.

Clarice righted herself, cursing softly as her right foot slipped calf-deep into the cold water when she scooped the little thing into her hands.  She held her breath in pain as she pulled herself up with her injured arm, but murmured in soothing tones to the little chirping thing as she made her way over to the next cove.

The bird was too frightened, maybe, to jump from her hand, so she had to lean to release it into the water.

Only then did she acknowledge Hannibal’s presence by walking to him, a little breathless, flushed and salt-wet and shivering.

“He would have found his way,” Hannibal said, taking off his jacket to wrap her in.

The jacket was heavy and blue and held his warmth.  “Not everything can, Doctor Lecter, without some help.”  She smoothed the jacket over her shoulders.  “Not everyone can.”

His eyes narrowed.  When particularly avid his eyes grew bright and his smile tugged irresistibly, as if he were honing in on some great pleasure—a fox cornering a rabbit.  Around her, his expressions were growing less guarded.  “You always think of that, don’t you, Clarice?  You remember.  What it is like not to be saved.  What it feels like to not be able to save.”

The pain that sparked though her eyes like flash paper was very sweet.

She smiled, a witchy half-grin he remembered from when they first met.  “No more, Hannibal, than you remember what it is to starve,” and the pain he felt then was equally sweet.

She kissed the taste of it off the corner of his lips.  She was developing his palate.

***

The first few nights she was particularly restless, and jerked and kicked in the bed, frowning and sighing.  The senselessly present sunlight was a constant cold diffused glow.  One would sleep and awake to what seemed to be the same day—no endings here, and thus no loss.

No loss of time, maybe, but starvation always seemed close and they shared themselves for warmth and sustenance.  When they slept in their smaller bed, when he was certain she was asleep, he pressed his forehead to hers and inhaled.  He would wonder if he could ever get to the whole heart of her; he would never tire of trying.

When she thought he was asleep, she would brush her hand over the wide sharp planes of his face made sharper by the daylight.  At rest and in stark lighting, his paling hair and harsh bone structure could make him look lashless and browless; inhuman.  He did not know her thoughts when she did this for some time, until once when he smelled the hot salt of tears on her skin.

He opened his eyes.  He looked his age only when he looked sad.  “Clarice,” he said, his voice raspy from sleep.  “What is the matter?”

It was some time before she answered.  “What do I want from you,” she said softly, sadly.  “What do I want with you.  What do you want with me, is it the same, what do you want.”  She squeezed her eyes shut and the tears rolled down.

He reached out to fan his hand over her heart (like she were an anchor for him, as he had once served as) so they could share its beating, until she fell asleep.  She always slept fitfully, in that lonely daytime world.

***

“Sometimes,” she said, watching him cook.  “I feel like I’ll never see the stars again.”

He was chopping pickled beets for a dish from his youth.  Their shopping trips were limited so he had bought things that kept, preparing more with blade than flame.  They ate sharp bitter things that bit and bled into their tongues.

It was a dish that required more muscle memory than thought; he worked methodically, with apron and sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“I remember feeling that way,” he said, calm and clipped as ever.  “I felt that way about the sun, when all I had was the dark.  You must have faith you will have them both again.”

Clarice darted her hand out to snatch a piece of beet.  He tilted his head sternly; she smiles as she chewed.

“Maybe you still will, Doctor.  But for now, it’s nice to just enjoy the one, isn’t it?”

The juice had stained her pale fingers red.  He reached for her hand to lick off the excess, sucking the last one clean, before returning to the other meal at hand.

***

Target practice was in the early morning when the sun was low:  Clarice had chosen a tree, spindling and dark, to take her punishment.  The cabin was some way off but still visible, lonely and grey with lights burning gold inside.

Hannibal had brought his crossbow but held it by his side while she shot.  He loved to watch her go cold and still was she aimed, with her always-steady hands.

Clarice emptied the barrel in quick succession. The gunpowder blasted bitter, the cracks echoing in the cold air as the shells landed softly in the wet grass.

“You’ve abandoned your Dante,” he remarked.

In their new surroundings she always put the book away with a sigh soon after opening it.  Something about the light here, she had said, was incompatible with the text.  Instead, she read older stories in editions illustrated with precise etchings of dreamy grotesquerie.

“Yeah, for right now,” she said.  “I like the new books you brought.  You’ve read them?” She removed more bullets for her cartridge with heavy clicks.  “Of course you have.  Remember the story of Loki and Gulveig?”

“Tell me,” he said, as he had said so many times before.

Sometimes when Clarice smiled her eyes went narrow and sly.  “Okay.  So.”  She balanced as she reloaded her cartridge, her violent task accomplished with grace and ease.  She was rarely so relaxed as when she worked with her gun.  “Loki was the trickster god from around these parts.  He was beautiful.  Like really weirdly lovely, especially for a trickster.”  She looked up at him.  “He was called Silvertongue because he was so clever it could be dangerous to even talk to him.  The other gods ended up locking him beneath the earth because in his heart he was a monster.  Or, at least, he became one.”

Hannibal lifted and began winding his crossbow.  “A Lucifer equivalent, I believe it is argued.  The same etymologies: fire. Light.”

She tilted her head and winked, echoing his mannerisms.  “You got it.  But here’s the thing—before all that, Loki walked free and loved a witch named Gulveig.  Some say she enchanted him, but I don’t like that.  I don’t think that’s as interesting.”

“Hmm.  Is this from the traditional Sturleson translation?”

“You wanna listen or you wanna be cute?”

He dipped his head and was silent; she continued.

“She was even more dangerous than he was, Gulveig.  His name meant fire and like fire he could consume and transform; he was always hungry.  But her name meant Thirst—Gold-thirst.  Thirst for fine things, for a beautiful world, at the cost of all else.  And there was nothing she couldn’t get through her cleverness and charm—including Loki.”

She turned, choosing a new target.  “Nothing was ever enough for her, not even him.  She loved him but she was never sated.  The other gods saw how dangerous she was, and, one day, when Loki was gone—“

She shot.

“They caught her.  They bound her to a stake.  They pierced her with spears.”

She shot again.

“And then burned her to death, over and over.  Smoke filling the hall.  Blood steaming in the rushes on the floor.  But she kept coming back to life, reconstituting herself, until she went down the third time in flames.”

Shot; shot.  His ears rang, even though she had the silencer on.  

Clarice continued.  (She had always had a violent streak; he had seen that the moment he had seen her.)  The clip not quite empty, she lowered the gun to stretch her hands.

“All that was left of Gulveig was her charred heart in the ashes.  Loki found it upon his return.  That’s all he found.”  She turned to face Hannibal.  “Imagine how he must have felt.  How lost and hungry he must have been, when he realized that from then on, he could roam the entire world through all the time left to him; could search all the halls and rooms of all the worlds and never find her again except in the expanse of his own skull.  So.”

She turned back to the trees and cocked the gun.  “He picked up the heart.  It burned in his hands.  And he ate—he ate her burning heart.”

The shocks of the final shots were swallowed by the wide white sky.

“He ate it slowly,” Clarice said, speaking quickly.  “He savored it.  But you know what nobody told him?  About eating a heart?”

Her voice was pitching high; he exchanged her gun for the crossbow.

“What, my dear,” he asked.  “What did nobody tell him.”  

Hannibal leaned into her as he helped her aim the crossbow—an unfamiliar weapon for her.  Her short and compact frame easily folded into his larger and leaner one.  His face was solemn and avid as ever when considering her.

He was curious what she would do.

Clarice shivered involuntarily at the surprise of his touch, but when she spoke again her voice was steady and clear.  “You can’t just eat a living heart and be finished.  It doesn’t satisfy you.  It just makes you more hungry.”  She leaned back into his chest and he briefly closed his eyes.  “That’s what it did to poor ole Lo.  Once he ate her heart, he took on her hungers, her knowledge, her power.  She ran in his blood even though she would never come back, not ever, no matter what he did.”

“It sounds quite painful.”  He steadied her by her hips, correcting her stance, nuzzling her neck briefly.  “Now why don’t you fire,” he murmured, “there’s a girl.  How about that knot in the tree?”

She obeyed.  The snap of the bow hummed in the clear air and the bolt was only off its mark by a little.  She breathed, as if the release was hers, and leaned back into him.

“What a sound,” she said softly.  “A musical note.  But yes, I bet it was painful.  Bet it was also the best thing he ever tasted.”

“The best meals, though, are meant to be shared.  Perhaps that pained him as well.”

She turned, and keeping the crossbow between them, pressed her hand to his chest over the gunshot scars.  He wrapped his arms around her waist, the blunt of the gun in the small of her back.

She brought her hands to his face—she no longer had to wonder how he tasted.

Even without the gun Hannibal was more than capable of killing; even without the crossbow she was just as dangerous.  He had his peculiar brilliances and inhuman strength—but also, the place he held in all her schema.  Clarice had her own peculiar brilliances plus her combat training, and kept weapons always at arms reach even now—but also, the curve of her body and her open bleeding heart.  

They were and remained creatures who knew hunger and all of its ramifications.

***

Hannibal never brought up anything as gauche as the vagaries of extradition treaties, but Clarice had smiled when he asked if she wanted to go to Argentina next.  

Time was different in Buenos Aires; it flowed in a rhythmic rush that always seemed to be building to and yet never quite attaining climax.  When they drove, they left the windows down to let the light and color and music seep in and tint.

They had finally grown into comfortable rhythms around one another.  Hannibal slept wantonly late in the mornings.  Clarice only left out books and papers on specific surfaces and was quiet when he drew or played music.  He did not play music when she napped.

Here, on the other side of the world she knew, he showed her off: dinners, parties, theater.  The opera was a favorite of theirs.  Here Clarice wore color, saturated and soft, and jewels.

(He did not mention the time he saw their old acquaintance Barney, up in the student’s seats of the opera; the situation would resolve itself.)

The last opera they attended together was Gluck’s Armide.

Clarice wore red and gold set with diamonds, bright even in the plush dark of their box.  She balanced the libretto on her lap, and leaned slightly against her companion as the overture started.  

Among the roles listed: heroes who follow Glory; nymphs who follow Wisdom; people of Damascus; shepherds; followers of Cruelty and Vengeance; Pleasures; demons disguised as happy lovers.

The curtains opened onto a grand stone palace and Armide, standing strong with purpose.

The music was an orderly stream at first, horns and violins suggesting a certain old grandeur and light.  These highly delineated tendencies, Hannibal had always felt, more beautifully offset Armide’s pain and desire.

Armide is about a powerful enchantress who falls in love at first sight with an enemy knight named Renaud—her agony begins a bright sick drop of messy red against the orderly silver and white of the music, as she struggles to bring herself to kill her knight as he sleeps.  

Instead, she strikes upon a compromise exquisitely cruel to them both:

She will enchant him to love her.

She does this with a wand instead of words or needles and the red of the music keeps blooming palpable, curling corrupt and sick, as she enchants the winds to mirror her desires and she takes him all over the world to all ends of the earth—as he loves her, as he was enchanted to, since, as she claims, he was made for love.  

This only lasted, of course, until the Renaud’s friends, warriors themselves, find him and free him from the spell and from her.

Hannibal blinked, as onstage they reached her palace of glass and stone; he was taken to a place he would have preferred not to visit.

He knew pain and he knew hunger and to him they were just gradations of a palate; he enjoyed the extremes of human experience as well as everything in between.  And he had no need for forts in his skull because he had his palace, because he was not horrified by anything in his head—

Except hunger.

And he had never before felt the sick lurch of oily black dread as he watched Armide trying to free herself of her love only to be cursed to have her heart be forever her knight’s; as she pled for her knight not to leave her after the curse is broken, as curses are made to be broken even as certain people are made to love, as the only she could do when so bereft was to burn her palace down and try to bury the pain in the ruins.

But one cannot destroy lack; one cannot destroy hunger.

Hannibal realized he had not been breathing for several seconds and hissed in a breath through his nostrils; Clarice looked over, her brow knit.  He knew that although he tended to go still and dormant when trying to privately savor an experience, he had been acting strangely.

He smiled at her; he pressed his lips, closed, to hers.

As the curtain fell she kept watching him even as they applauded, her quick percussive claps making the gold of her necklace glint in the light, and the red of her dress pulse like blood.

The soiree afterwards was every bit the performance as the actual production and with similar players.  The demon couple disguised as simply happy lovers never drift too far apart but they do drift.

Clarice found Hannibal on a balcony, chewing on the inside of his lower lip in dissatisfaction.

She joined him, resting her arms on the balcony and leaning.  The city rushed on below them in its implacable rhythmic neon.  “Well,” she said.

“Forgive me,” he said.  “An old ache I thought resolved.”

“We could have left.  I mean, I loved it, but I read the end before it started.”

“Bad girl.”

“This was a strange one, wasn’t it?” she said, leaning against him.  He rested his hand on her back; they both considered the city.  “Most of these things, the character’s punishment is to die.  Not Armide.  She had to live, even after Renaud left her.  Even though that of course was inevitable.”

“Yes.”

She twisted her face at him.  “Ok.  Don’t tell me what’s wrong,” she said, playful as ever when she was playing dumb for courtesy.  “But next time if you’re feeling off, let’s just leave.”

“I wanted to see the end.”

“Me too, H,” she said, and she leaned her cheek into his shoulder, almost shy in the time she took.  “Even if I know how it’s gonna end.”  She paused.  “Knew, I mean.”

Hannibal suddenly missed his coat, although the night was warm.  “I understood.”  He turned to her.  “You do look very lovely tonight, Clarice.”

Her eyes went dark.  “Thanks.  Feel like a princess from a fairy tale, sometimes, like it’s—like it’s all just an enchantment, and I’ll wake up someday and it’ll be done.”  She seemed to fumble for her words as she went on.  “Did—did you know I’d become this?” She pulled at the jewels at her neck.  “Or did you just hope?”  Her voice was low, sad.  She asked him these questions with utter trust; he was the only one who ever knew her.

Hannibal’s face was calm carved stone and glittering red, his eyes swallowing the urgent light of the city below them in red sparks.

Clarice’s ip curled as she opened her mouth to say something, but she was interrupted by a loud exclamation from behind:

“Ah,” came a voice, loud and slurred.  “My fellow American.”

Starling actually rolled her eyes as the man approached but the large plump man did not  notice as he almost crashed into them.  Hannibal smiled broad and close-lipped as she made the introduction.

Hannibal recognized him—an artist recently reached international fame.  He was drunk and his eyes raked hungrily over Clarice as she spoke.

“And how did you two meet,” he said, interrupting Hannibal’s niceties.  There was a quickness to his tone that indicated he was going somewhere with this.

“Work,” Starling said easily.  “He did some consulting work for my company I was at; I was the assigned liaison.”  She smiled softly at Hannibal, her lips twitching down only a little.  She took his hand, which he covered briefly with his other.  “We hit it off.”

“I can see you’re quite taken with him.”

Starling hrugged, and let go.  “Oh.  He’s all right I guess.”  She laughed.  “I took some convincing.”

The artist laughed too loud, and Clarice gave Hannibal a run for his money in her skill atgoing immediately politely blank.  “But he probably didn’t, did he?” the man said.

“Not at all,” Lecter finally offered.  “She impressed me immediately with her bright mind and kind heart.”

Starling scoffed. “Not, uh, quite immediately. If I remember right.”

He looked at her, steady. “Immediately.” She stopped smiling.

“Her mind and heart, eh?” the man blustered. “But that wasn’t all, was it? The benefit of age and wealth and charm, is it not? We can have anything we like. We can help ourselves to all the luscious young bodies we like. It is,” he leered, “our due, isn’t it? Pig.”

Hannibal smiled tightly, thanking the man, remarking that it is always refreshing to see an artist’s banal and reductive worldview reflected in his personal life; it makes one believe in a certain symmetry to life that sometimes seems lacking.

Clarice smiled too but her smile was directed at Hannibal, and there were more teeth in it than normal. He understood..

When he joined her in bed in the very early morning, mussed and a little bruised, she nestled into him.

“Mon amour funeste,” she said.

“Mon amour,” he corrected.  “Au bout de l’univers.”

She, unlike her predecessor, always liked to be pressed against and curled into him; entwined.  

Hannibal had long since realized that what seemed to be a quiet act of submission could in fact be its opposite. He never asked.

***

Clarice did not personally know the man handcuffed to the faux-grecian support pillar in front of her—only that they were and remained at odds that she had neatly tipped in her favor; only that he fancied himself a brave knight come to rescue her for the bounty.

Not for the first time, she counted herself lucky that people did not tend to consider her a danger, and that men were easily lured into flats by pretty women.

“You’re lucky you got just me,” she said to him.  “Unlike my, uh, my partner, I don’t go for unnecessary pain.  But me and you, we want different things here, and since I’m the one that’s gonna be getting what I want I will hurt you pretty bad if you don’t cooperate.  Yeah?”

The man’s dark hair stuck to the wound on his forehead as he nodded.

“Ok,” she said.  She took out her Glock and aimed for his kneecap.  “Who put the bounty on us?”  She recognized the answer; with a sick lurch the air seemed too clear, all of a sudden. She was seeing too clearly.

She blinked the sensation away. “How did you find us, though?” she asked.  “So you won’t catch us like that again.”  Best he thought he was going to live.

“Went to a profiler.”  The handcuffs chinked against the marble as he struggled.

“Who?”

“Will Graham,” he said.

She chewed her lip.  “Now that is a pity,” she said, raising the gun slightly.  “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”  He spat blood on the floor.  It splatted bubbly and pink on the white stone.

“Maybe not,” she said, which wasn’t quite true.  “But it was nice to think I was, wasn’t it?”  Who she meant the words for was unclear.

After the pop and quick splatter of the silenced gun and the bullet through brain tissue, blood dripped black on the marble in a dark slow ooze.

At the sound, Clarice gasped.

She felt she had just woken up, somehow.

She still held the record for most kills by a female officer but this was not in the line of duty and for a moment she felt dizzy and small as she saw herself clearly.  The air was cold in her lungs as she sucked it in.

***

He smelled her before he saw her; gunpowder and sweat and pain, but little agitation.  Trauma for Clarice was dropping white stones into cold dark pools: it sank quick and deep out of sight with only a small splash.

When he reached their room it was with a cold scrape he saw her.  He stopped, a long-legged silhouette posed in the doorframe.

She did not hold clothes out speculatively as she packed but knew exactly what she had and what she wanted.  She only stopped when he reached her,  shoulders soft under his rawbone hands.

“Someone caught up to us, H,” she said.  “Had to get him myself.”

He leaned in to nuzzle her neck and taste the acerbic hum of her discomfort.  “Who?”

“He said Amsel sent him. This is extremely bad; the bounty is still out. They will not stop coming after us.”

“I will address it.  How did—”

“Got him with a bullet,” she said, purposely deflecting.  She shuddered in a breath.

Lecter turned her around, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes as he read her.  Her blue eyes were opaque; the stones already dutifully swallowed.  
   
He tilted her head up so she would meet his eyes, and his wide smile had the hint of teeth.  “Do you want me to ask you to stay?” he said, his clipped soft tone his wont when he feigned gentleness.  “Do you want me to beg you?  To command you, Special Agent Starling, so you will have an enemy to overcome?”  

Hannibal leaned forward, to whisper neatly into her ear: “To make you?”

His hands stayed steady even as she tensed, and she smiled that he would make her ask for a struggle.  She leaned up to kiss him slowly, close-mouthed, taking his bottom lip between her teeth—and he could feel his blood rise, the heat of it showing in his eyes like embers, and his nostrils flaring.

His brave little creature who hunted monsters—she had taken the leap that Will never could (she was much more brave and valued her life much less) and he could not stop her running forever and still keep her. It was not in her nature, which would be forever beyond him to alter, no matter how he reconstituted or refined it.

“How are you so sure,” she said, low and soft and slow, like the blood trickle from an exit wound, “what I’m going to do?”

Hannibal could hear her heart beat, could almost smell the blood flushing her skin, how she pressed into him.  He looked her over with curled lip, reflecting that lust was surely the strangest form of hunger, to want to be taken in another’s body.

“Take off your clothes,” he said, running his hands down her shoulders and ribs and hips, angling under the sweater to her bare warm skin.

As she obeyed, pulling off her sweater and pants and underthings, navigating around his hands, he noted it was the first time he had ever seen her hands shaking and he wanted to bite into her then and there.

Once she kicked her pants aside (rude, lovely girl) she reached for him, a little desperate, her skin an electric charge against his.  

He stopped her, grabbing her wrists.

“Lay back on the bed,” he said, soft.  After she complied: “Put your hands apart to your side.”  She fanned her small hands over the comforter.  “That’s my girl,” he crooned.

Her hands didn’t move but she rubbed her legs together, craving stimulation, as he removed a thin pale cord from the bedside table.  She arched her back and bit her lip to keep herself still, as he carefully knelt next to her on the bed, taking one of her wrists and tying it, looping the cord through the bars and binding the other.  As he undressed—shirtsleeves and slacks, casual for him—he watched as she tested the bonds.

If she wanted to, she could bring her hands together to pick out the knots.  She knew this. So, instead, she pulled, biting the cord into her skin leaving red little grins in her wrists.

He leaned over her, not touching, as she forced herself to be still, her pretty face dead-set serious.  His breath ghosted over her before he touched her, and she gave a small hum.

He ate up the shape of her under his hard hands, running down her arms, across her ribs and belly and hips, before finally cupping her breasts, stroking the inside of her thighs, kissing her neck.

Hannibal had her, his honey-tongued sharp-toothed girl, well-mapped; he knew all the combinations to undo her and under his touch she began to be undone, to open and bloom, to take him in.

Clarice watched him all the while.

It was part of her pleasure to see herself so consumed; memorized and seen exactly as she was.  To be killed, in a way, for to die is to cease to change.  It was part of his pleasure to have her serve herself up to him, helpless by choice under his hands and formed to his preference, burning away to the very heart of her.

Hannibal kissed where her jaw met her neck.  “Does it pain you, Clarice” he asked, his cheek scraping and his breath hot on her skin, “what you’ve become?”   He kissed and bit his way, hard, wet, down her throat, while pushing her legs apart and slipping a hand between them—she cried out.

Her sounds of pleasure and pain were mostly indistinguishable, except to him..

“Tell me, truly, Starling,” he continued.  “Do you blame me?”  He cupped her breast, kissed it, suckled as she bucked before he pulled back, his face curling feral.

“But you and I are made by pain,” he said, his cadence gentle as ever when he went cruel, and when he bent to her again the sucking turned into a bite, so hard and sudden that she arched almost completely off the bed, pulling hard against the cord, nails digging into her palm.  She squeezed her thighs to try to keep his hands between them but he denied her with a sneer.  “And we thrive on it.  Does it frighten you, that it does not frighten you?  Tell me, Clarice.  Tell me.”

And there is a heat and urgency to his words that make them a plea, which she in turn denied at first—no answer but her steady glare and parted lips.  When he caressed her face she snapped at his hand, sucking on his index finger, scraping her teeth because she liked to see the red flare in his eyes.

He moved down to kiss up the soft inside of her thigh until he reached her cunt.  Eyelids heavy, he licked her open and flushed with slow broads strokes, until his focused his attentions on all the places that made her writhe and gasp.  He settled into a rhythm of sucking and swirling and flicking.  Her hands pulled against the headboard when she tried to reach out for him, shaking the bed,

One hand bracing himself on her ribcage, he penetrated her with his fingers. Hannibal delighted in how she tensed and moved under and around him, rougher and rougher and more and more violently.

“You—you give yourself,” she finally said—he only went harder—“ahhh,” she finally cried out, and he entered her with his tongue to taste as she pulsed her climax.

As she caught her breath, Hannibal pulled himself up to push her hair from her face and kiss her as she tried to catch her breath, to let her taste too.

“Lemme go, H,” she said, after a lull, pulling at her bonds.  She had fought too hard and her wrists were chewed red.  

He made no move.  “You can release yourself.”

Clarice stopped pulling.  “Let me go.”

He raised to a kneel, and regarded her for some cold and heart-pounding seconds, searching for fear in her eyes and finding none.

Hannibal untied her.

“I give myself what?” he enquired, but she pushed him down to kiss him, to straddle him.  Clarice’s movements were seldom soft (like Will’s but from intent, rather than desperation) but there was a gentleness in how she took him in her hand, pulling at the hot hard length of him, rubbing him against her.  

Her eyes burned brilliant as she watched him, how Hannibal’s haughty face and cruel mouth went slack, how his eyes narrowed when she sank down on him; how he gasped.

He could feel her still twitching feverish around him as she began to move, pulling his hands from her thighs to her hips.

“You give—you give yourself too much credit,” Clarice said, running one hand up his belly and chest, the other on his hand to steady herself.  “More than is your due.”  She smiled at his silence; she loved having Hannibal Lecter wordless.

“And what,” he finally managed, “is my due?”

“Oh, I am, of course.  But I’ll have my due too.”  Her words were more breath than voice.

“And what is that,” he hissed. He moved his hand to her clit; it was some seconds before she was able to answer.

“Your heart,” she managed, finally. “I’ll eat--your heart, like you--ah--ate mine.”

He raised up sharply at that, holding her tight in his lap, thrusting as she not quite whimpered, and buried his face in her neck.  It was his endearments like daggers that she gasped at, not when he pushed her down and angled her leg so he could fuck into her as deep as possible.  

Now, he ceded her his control, driving into her. He wanted to get further and further in, to pull her apart to find parts yet untasted. Hannibal loved her body: the lush curves of her, the luscious weight of soft, gasping flesh.

“You didn’t tell me,” she whispered, and he let her leg fall to drape his weight and heat over her as they fucked. “You said you would and you never did, I’m only angry at you for that, why didn’t you tell me about what it is to eat a heart.”

“Brave Clarice,” he whispered, “my brave sweet girl, what didn’t I tell you.”

“How much—“ but she was interrupted when he bit into her neck, and she dug her nails into his back.  “How it changes you from yourself.  How much—ah—it fucking hurts, oh, it hurts, you hurt me, you hurt me so fucking much.”

He came inside her with a cry, and it was some moments before they disentangled as she whispered her own cruel endearments.

“Stay there, H.  Stay right here, Doctor Lecter, don’t move,” she whispered, finally, rising from the bed.

When she was dressed again and ready, with him on the bed, she kissed the corner of his mouth softly before she left.

Her legs were trembling as she left.

She left the Dante on his bedside; there was a note.

He marveled at how his heart burned within him as she gently closed the door.

This was an old pain with new teeth.  It burned instead of cut. He fancied for a moment being burned to nothing but ash, to be found again when she chose. If she chose.

The note was on pale fine paper, stuck in between the yellowed pages of “La Vita Nuova.” Her penmanship was terrible as ever but the words were written steady. It said, among other things: “Can’t nobody stay like they want to.”

He burned it to white ash.

He only tasted ash.

***

III.V  RECREATION

Lecter scoops the chopped heart into a neat red pile before he reaches for the other ingredients.  The blood hangs heavy in the air.

The heart has four chambers but this is of course not maintained in a tartare.  They are chopped to bits and mixed and reconstituted into a form more pleasing to the mouth.  It is impossible to restore them to their original form; it is unnecessary.

His audience waits just past the kitchen doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing was, to be honest, the most I've ever struggled writing something. I suppose it didn't help I started working on it while living in Haiti where the atmosphere and life is diametrically opposed to this sort of aesthetic--nor that I've loved Clarice since my teenage years and so I weirdly felt I was being presumptuous by writing her. I hope it doesn't show too much.
> 
> This would not have been written without my beloved beta, who would not accept the half-hearted crap I tried to write at first and who always gives me ideas an improves my writing. She is a truly brilliant girl.
> 
> In a rather devastating turn, though, I've lost contact with her. This version of the chapter is un-beta'ed. Let me know if there are mistakes.
> 
> And lastly, if you like Hannibal and having feelings about the show, let me know because I love talking about feelings about television--I'm lipstickmata on tumblr. <3 <3 <3


	6. The Feather of Ma'at: Kingfisher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarice Starling finally meets Will Graham.

I. KINGFISHER

Will Graham was not hard to find. He had always been there, rotting in Florida, haunting the backs of the minds of those who treasured her. He had always been an enigma to her, too painful to speak of by those same people. A void, always in shadows, never delineated.

Clarice Starling flew to find him.

Airline wifi was terrible, especially with the various security measures in place on her laptop. She read old articles; she saw old tabloid pictures of Will’s wound before she realised what they were and clicked away out of respect. Her own gut stung in sympathy. There was not much of him lately, past his several public humiliations after Hannibal was captured. Her heart stung, when she read of those.

When her colleagues had spoken of Will, it was with an ugly cocktail of awe and superiority—the cautionary tale of Jack Crawford. When Jack spoke of him, it was rarely, and with regret. When Hannibal spoke of him, it was with a slight sting, a bitterness of rejection. Sometimes Hannibal would draw him, speak of him, make a particular dish. Sometimes, she knew, Hannibal would visit Will in his memory palace, visits which always preceded the making of some grand meal. In her own palace, Will had a place, but it remained empty. 

Clarice had never felt jealous of Will, never felt anything more until now than a gentle curiosity and compassion. There was never any part of Hannibal she wanted that she could not have all of. Poor Will, chewed up and spit out by all he had loved, and those who had loved him in their own devouring way.

He had sent hunters after them though, which meant he still knew Hannibal, and had figured her out well enough to rope her in too. 

This had to be dealt with. It really was too bad, wasn’t it, she thought.

On the way back to her native land, she sat by the window and watched the darkness churn beneath her, ocean and cloud. She only felt dizzy once, over Greenland. When she closed her eyes, tears wet her lashes, and she brushed them away quickly.

Clarice had used to be nervous traveling with fake documents, but had learned not to underestimate the corruptness of government officials selling templates to forgers, and the incompetence of most security personnel. Only a few concessions had to be made, now she had been gone so long. Dark hair, clothes cut to make her appear smaller and younger—or, that she wanted to appear smaller and younger anyway. A tacky purse with its logo emblazoned. It was important to send the wrong message.

In Florida, the air buzzed with heat and insects. He did not live on any beautiful part of the coast that people often visited, but there was a depth and unfinished quality to the landscape that she found both comforting and appealing. The sand, the grass, the heat, the bugs. A motel nearby was not difficult to find, and they took cash. She bought shorts, along with the requisite tape and knives and ropes, some key chemicals at separate stores, and after a little bit of detective work, a gun. It was nice to have the metal weight of one with her again. She had left a lot behind.

She camped in the dunes and tall grass to observe him first, a little outside his house. It was a shock when she first saw him, going to his boat, this strange tall figure who was in many ways her other part. Will Graham was middle-aged, with curly dark hair shot with grey and a few days growth of beard. Still handsome even with the ugly scars across his body and face. He moved carefully, like he was weighted. Like he still had wounds to tend to.

His schedule was neither complicated nor varied. He rose late, he fished, the light was on in his living room late as he watched TV and drank. He seemed never without a drink, some warm gold liquid like the Florida sun. He did not seem to have any alarms; he had none of the dogs she had heard about. (This was interesting. Three possibilities: He had no more of himself to give. He was inviting death and didn’t want to leave anyone behind. Or, he had become allergic to dogs. And therein, she thought ruefully, lay the essential problem of profiling.) The air shimmered with heat in the day, and hung heavy with salt and swelter at night. While she waited, she ate cheap snacks from gas stations and relished the over-processed taste of them. Beef jerky. Sun chips. All the things she hadn’t eaten had in so long. Sand and dirt caked her sweaty legs as she watched, and the sharp miasma of bug spray only went so far to deter mosquitos. Maybe she should have worn pants after all.

She had never much considered how Will Graham thought about her, or if he did at all. In a lot of ways, it would have made sense if Will regarded her with some relief, that she took Hannibal off his hands. She had not quite anticipated the pain and jealousy and resentment that must have also been present, if he was helping those who would kill Hannibal and her to find them. Which, to her, was just as good as trying to kill them himself. 

Clarice wondered how she would feel if Hannibal had gutted her and left her for another after a betrayal that was not so much treachery as Will being true to himself. She realised she would probably just go after Hannibal herself, if she had really felt sore about it. Either Will was very different, or something else was going on altogether. Either way, Graham wasn’t going to send anyone else to kill them. Even if she had to take drastic measures to make sure of it.

Late on the fourth night, Clarice entered his house quietly. He had one dog which she quickly placated. She had always been good with animals.

Will was knocked out with a quick application of chemicals. He was heavier and stronger than he looked; she however had kept up her training. Working quickly and methodically, she moved him to a chair, tied his hands behind his back, tied his feet together, tied him to the chair. She made sure the knots were not too tight. Just strong. 

It was only after that first rush that she really let herself look at him. Will Graham still had a very sweet, open face, although the lines from pain and worry were etched on it deep as the scar. His brow was knit in concern and sadness even when unconscious. The scar puckered his cheek. She reached out her hand, tentative, soft, and stroked his cheek to cover it. And when his face relaxed at the touch, Clarice felt she was reaching back though time, and again felt vertigo. 

It took Will long enough to wake up that she was worrying about her dosage, until she realised she probably hadn’t correctly calculated the alcohol in his system.

His eyes were still a brilliant blue, lighter than her own. He blinked as he struggled, when his eyes focused on her, he sighed and stopped.

“Sorry,” Clarice said. “But I needed to talk to you.”

“No, no, I should apologise,” he snipped. “Wasn’t expecting company.”

She smiled. “Or at least, probably not me.”

“No.” He laughed, and struggled to straighten. “Guess you’re why I’m still alive.”

“I’m Clarice Starling,” she said. “But you know that.”

He had a lovely dark smile, which lit up his face with pain. “I’m Will Graham, and I’m hoping you know that given our current, ah…”

“Seating arrangements,” she smiled, and he laughed again, a little too hard, and his eyes seemed wet.

“Jack said you had a good wit,” he said, and this time her face pulled with a trace of sadness.

“He didn’t talk about you much,” she said. “Shoot. I don’t mean that unkindly. I think he thought about you a lot.”

“ _Jack did_ , huh?” he said, and she didn’t answer. “That’s nice,” Will said, shifting, “yes, it sure is nice to know, but I have a feeling you’re not here trussing me up because of Jack.”

She took a breath, looked around the room, seemed to be deciding something. “Why did you help them find us, Mr. Graham?” 

“Why did Hannibal send you,” he said, his voice catching. “Why didn’t he come himself. Did I not deserve that?”

Clarice blinked at the contempt and rage in his voice. She worked to keep the same out of her own. “What you deserve. Is that why you did this?” It was his turn to not answer. “Hannibal doesn’t know I’m here.”

He snorted.

“Well, I didn’t tell him, anyway,” she amended. “He’s not dumb; he’ll figure it out soon enough. But by then I’ll be gone.”

“What about me?” He was looking away from her, jutting his jaw to steady it.

She raised the gun. “That depends on the answers to my questions.” 

“He made you a killer too, I see,” he spat.

“He didn’t _make me anything_ , Mr. Graham. I am not so malleable. I am _not you_.” She could make cheap shots, too. 

He sneered at her words, and she exhaled, slow, deliberate. “Look. I’m not him either. I’m not here to torture you, or punish you, or take anything out on you. I just need to understand a few things, and we can go from there. And please, be honest. I don’t have your facilities in certain areas, but I can tell a lie when I hear it.”

He clenched his jaw and looked to the side. Hannibal had often told her that compassion and fairness were often much more than most people could bear, and this is why they could fear and hate her. He had told her too, her cool blue gaze could destroy a man. Perhaps when she was younger, she might have strived to make Will Graham more comfortable. She didn’t bother, these days.

“He never came back for me, not even to kill me. Do you know what that feels like?”

“I enjoyed it, actually.”

“You mean after he escaped? No, for you, not tracking you down then, that was a sign of respect. A chance for you to grow, unfettered and unformed by him. For me, it was—was the opposite. He wanted to let me rot. Let me stew in all my pain, until I dissolved entirely. Wouldn’t even do me the honour of _talking_ to me. You know, he’d regularly wire little pittances into my bank accounts, no matter how many times I changed banks, how many times I moved, just to remind me that he knew where I was, if he wanted me. He never wanted me. He never wanted even revenge on me.”

Clarice cocked her head. She swept the dark bangs she wasn’t used to out of her eyes. “In his head, this could have been compassion.”

“That’s, well, _compassionate_ of you. But no. In your head or mine, it could have been, maybe, but not his. Like you said, you are not me, and what is his kindness to you is his hell for me.”

She nodded, slowly. “OK. So you were angry, and…no. Not jealous. You were lost, weren’t you. You were bound and you wanted to be free.”

“It wasn’t about you, you know. Sending those men after him.”

“Sure. I would have just been collateral damage.”

He sneered. “Maybe, though it might bear asking, why did you leave with him, knowing what he was?”

“Okay. Scratch that, then. My death would have been a bonus, not collateral damage,” she smiled, and more than a little of her coldness crept in. “I did everything you could never let yourself do, didn’t I?”

He grinned back. “On some level, I am sure you are right. You have his mind, don’t you, just as I have his heart. But I didn’t think of it that way. I just—oh,“ and he gasped in air, “you have no idea. For so many years, I had told people no, no, I won’t help you find him. I can’t. I won’t help you kill him, and then, kill both you and him. But the years are long, here, Clarice--Agent Starling--and I have truly lost everything. So the last time someone asked me, I…I said yes. I studied you. I studied how he might be now. And I figured out where you were, and suggested it. I didn’t know for sure. It was just a guess.”

“Your best one, and correct. Would have killed the both of us, all so you could do more than drink or fish. But you know what, Mr. Graham, even if you weren’t lying to me now, I don’t think it would have ended that way for you. I think you would have just drowned a little faster.” She cocked the gun.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“You did before, anyway. You were hoping that he would come himself, and end it for you. Like he wouldn’t, before.”

“Yes.”

She raised her hand, pointed. “It can be me, if you like. A good second place prize. I’ll say you’ve earned that.”

He closed his eyes. “Please.”

Clarice took a deep, slow breath. 

“Make sure to leave after you’re done, though,” he said. “He knows you’re here. I got a letter, just yesterday.” Will opened his eyes, and smiled at her wide eyes and the clench of her jaw, and nodded at the coffee table. “It’s there.”

She put the gun down, glad for the chance, and picked the letter up. There were some empty glasses and half-empty bottles on the table, which she pushed aside. She picked it up and read:

 

 _My dear Will_ , it said.

_I hope this letter finds you well. I still hope you are grateful, and I still hope you are not too ugly. That hasn’t changed, at least._

_But oh Will, you have, haven’t you. Still wounded, still doing nothing but fishing as if what could cure you lies in the water. Still living out these sunny ocean days as king of a realm of ruin, free of any new storms, never letting go of the old ones._

_The first halcyon days, or king-fisher days, were meant to be seven days each on either side of the winter solstice. The first pair of the mythical birds Halcyon, or kingfishers, were created from a marriage of Alcyone and Ceyx. As gods, they lived the sacrilege of referring to themselves as Zeus and Hera. They died for this, but the other gods, in an act of compassion, made them into birds, thus restoring them to their original seaside habitat. They were granted these days of peace and calm once a year. Compassion can be its own kind of monstrous, you see._

_How do they find you, Will, your halcyon days?_

_I do miss you, my darling boy._

_I am sorry I could not come myself, but as I understand it, you will have a visitor soon. I do hope this righteous wintry Percival can ask you the right question, the one I never could seem to—the one that will heal you._

_Perhaps I will see you again, in the halls of the two truths. Until then, I remain very truly yours (as you will always be very truly mine),_

_Hannibal Lecter, MD_

 

“Goddammit,” Clarice said, matter-of-fact. “What a little bitch.”

Will laughed, showing his white teeth. “Fucking MD, too. He never did seem to get self-conscious.”

She laughed too. “Good thing he got his little lecture on mythology in there. It’s not a real Hannibal discourse without some arcane reference.”

“Oh, he crammed a few in, don’t even worry about it.”

She tossed the letter aside, rubbed her hands to get off the scent that still clung to it. “I’m surprised he didn’t also send along some creepily intimate drawing of you as some sort of weird half-kingfisher centaur nonsense. That used to be like his fave hobby, those drawings. He used to do them of me, lambs and lions and the whole metaphorical lot, and I got the honour of them all being gone over by my coworkers. That was sure the best.”

“All mine were weird Greek things,” Will admitted, still smiling. 

Clarice stood. “What question does he think you want me to ask you?”

“My _righteous wintry Percival?”_

“God _dammit_ , Graham,” she groaned.

“If I knew what he meant, I think you wouldn’t have to ask it.”

“I’m sorry, then,” she said. “I truly am.” She walked over to him, and ran her small pale hand through his dark hair. He closed his eyes. She flicked open her pocket knife.

“Thank you,” he said.

She leaned to cut his bonds, soothing him with a companionable caress on the shoulder as he flinched, and gathered up the ropes to throw them away. The letter had broken whatever spell of animosity they had been under. Maybe it had been meant to. She didn’t bear him ill will himself, but she sure did hate being judged wanting by men who thought they had the high ground. “Sorry again. I just had to make sure this stayed civil.” 

“Well, thanks for keeping it civil, I guess. And for not killing me.”

“It’s the little things.” She reached out her hand and helped him stand, and they stood looking at one another. Two blue gazes, one dark like ice in oceans, one light like sunlight in shallows.

Will broke eye contact first. He rubbed his wrists. “Look,” he said. “My plan was stupid and desperate. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer for it. I mean, it’s you he’s gonna come after.”

“Funny, I read that and I get the opposite idea.”

“Maybe it’s both of us.” He walked over to an old cabinet, opening it and pulling out two small glasses and a bottle of whiskey. “Can I get you a drink?”

Clarice looked at him for a moment and smiled. “I’ll make some tea. You recover.”

Will put the glasses back, and sat down on the faded couch. He leaned, rubbed his face, rubbed his hands through his hair. Clarice couldn’t help noticing the fine arc and taper of his muscled shoulders and back under the thin fabric, and shook off the thought as she went into the kitchen. It wasn’t kept badly, just a little absently. There were dog figurines, like in the living room. There was no trace of his career, his family, anything he had treasured that he had lost. She supposed she didn’t blame him there. All in all, his energy (under the pain) was one of warmth, and goodness, and an earnestness in him that perhaps was the counterpart of the ambition in her, and a protectiveness he both had and inspired.

She heard some slightly caught breathing, and gave Will a polite moment to gather himself. It had been a petty desperate thing to do, but then again, so had tying him up. Just a way to assert power and relevance.

What was the question Hannibal spoke of, that could heal him? In the story, Percival was meant to ask about some certain object. She doubted that would be helpful. Unless the dog figurines were really key or something, but she doubted it. Will seemed pretty defeated, pretty open to volunteering anything.

She hadn’t known what to expect when she got here. A broken, sweet, handsome, abrasive ruined man. One who despite drowning in whiskey and living on the fish he caught and the memories he could never let go of, had figured them out enough to know where they might be hiding. 

Why, she thought ruefully, was genius so inconvenient to its bearer, not to mention those around them.

She made peppermint tea, which he no doubt only had for stomach aches but it was the only thing she could find. It had been a long time since she had had cheap tea from a crumpled box. She and Ardelia, they had had a whole shelf of it between them. Ardelia favoured fruits and spice; she favoured flowers and herbs. She missed Ardelia—the realisation came like a knife in the belly. How had she not felt it so deeply, before? She had been living in a dream. One that had been denied to Will.

How desperate he must have been. How broken. No way to use his talents without carving up himself as well. No way to save anyone. Nothing left to hold on to. Waiting for a death that would never come. The impulse of the fox to gnaw his own foot off, to escape the trap. That’s all this was. 

No, she couldn’t leave him here, waiting for it all to end. 

It would end now. She would do what he could not.

Just as he had done what she couldn’t, and stayed loyal to those people and institutions who would devour him whole.

They finished the tea companionably, talking about memories at the FBI, uncomplicated silly cases, uncomplicated silly coworkers, their favourites of their pets they had owned. The windows were open and through the screens were comforting nighttime sounds of nature, and the lap of the waves. 

When they had finished, Clarice rose, and Will rose too. “I gotta be going, of course,” she said. 

“I admit,” he said, “I worried about you. When I heard of you the first time, and always, since.” He put his hand on her shoulder, hovering, tentatively, before resting it. He brought his eyes to hers, which seemed to require a steeling of muscle.

She covered his hand with hers. She did not smile. “That was kind, but unnecessary. I was just fine. 

“I know you were. It’s just, I wasn’t.”

“I know.” She let go of him, and leaned forward to kiss the scruff of his cheek marred by the scar, lightly.

“Listen,” she said. “I have a question for you.”

He waved a hand. “Of course you can stay, if you want,” he said. “Long as you'd like. This is probably the only place Hannibal won’t come.”

“Would you like to come with me?” She reached for his hand to clasp it with both hands. 

Will seemed frozen. Then he pulled her hand up and lightly kissed it. 

“Yes,” he said. “I would.” He smiled then, and he shone, and Clarice saw how you could love him so easily, and she smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m baaaaaaaack I’m back. To finish this dear monster. I moved countries again, crossed larger and colder oceans than the last time, and that’s never been good for my fiction output.
> 
> I went a little crazy with allusions but you got pretty much 3 main ones here: the story of the Fisher King, and some Egyptian and Greek mythology.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter. I really enjoyed finally writing my two little FBI buttons in the same room at last, and seeing them through each other's eyes instead of Hannibal's. They're a bit rude at first, admittedly, but they get over it.


	7. The Duat, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some timeline things:
> 
> Basically Hannibal gets out a lot. Clarice was living European vacation 2.0, after Bedelia’s. Write your stories faster, kids, and then timelines won't be such a problem.

**The Duat, part I**  
****

_('I’m a goddamn coward but then again so are you’)_

 

Leaving was easy, even with this woman he had imagined a hundred times but had never hoped to meet.

In his imagination, Will Graham had seen Clarice Starling (on the rare occasions he didn’t picture Hannibal)descend on the house as an avenging angel, a femme fatale, anything but the short younger woman who had just nodded when he said he needed to pack, and went to wait in the living room. She hadn’t laughed, at his panic or discomfort, or smiled too knowingly like patronising an awkward child. (They still did that, some women, even though he was well into middle age.)

 He had never seen himself, in his mind, actually leaving his small Florida house.

 Still, it didn’t take long to grab a few pairs of clothes and throw them into a duffel bag he had to dig out of his closet—the only one in the house that didn’t smell faintly of fish, of old cotton. He was all too aware, as he packed, of his house’s smell of alcohol and dog, and the thin and omnipresent coating of salt and sand that came from leaving his bedroom window open at night.

 (A window wouldn’t stop whatever was coming, he had rightly guessed.)

 Will had kept nothing of Wolf Trap. Nothing of Molly; nothing of Hannibal, certainly. They would have been nothing but failed monuments to a person he almost managed to be, for a short period of time.

 Clarice waited politely. If she had been Hannibal, he realised, she would have been nosing around, not terribly subtly. Instead, she washed out his untouched mug of tea. She sat on the armchair and played with his dog, speaking whosa-good-boy nonsense who licked her hand and jumped up to place his little paws on her bare and slightly dirty knees.

 “I don’t know about bringing this cutie,” she admitted when he re-entered the room. She was rubbing the pup’s head as it licked her arm.

 “Oh, that’s all right. I have a contingency plan. In case something like this happened.”

 He kneeled down next to her; took over petting the dog.

 “In case a wanted woman came and spirited you away?” she asked.

 “Well, I didn’t expect to actually…” he shrugged. And he felt dizzy, as the weight it all crashes around him. He sat back on his heels to steady himself.

 Clarice pushed her hair behind her ear. Without the wig, it was at an awkward length, often falling into her face. “Hope your plan wasn’t for the dog to feed on your body.”

 “No.”

 A pause, before he continued:

 “Didn’t think I’d _leave_ a body—“

 “All right, all right, I gotcha.” She rose. “Let’s go, mope-bear.”

 “Where are we going, Clarice?” he asked, directing his remarks to his dog. It almost kept his voice from breaking. He thought of seeing _him_ again—the same thoughts he had every night, every day, hating Hannibal and wanting him too.

 His dog smiled back up at him in response, panting.

 She did laugh, now. “Does it matter? You just told me your best case scenario was to wait around till a nice man came along and ate you.”

 He smiled, looked up at her. “Fair enough.”

 Will followed her outside, walking with her down the road to her nondescript little sedan. The road was broken asphalt. The air outside was warm, gold and blue and purple, and buzzed with life. Clarice beeped open the door, and opened the back door to let the dog in. When Will opened the passenger side door, she apologized for the crumpled wrappers strewn across the seat.

 “Wasn’t expecting a passenger?” he said.

 She grinned.

 “Ah,” he said, deliberately, relaxing. So she had, almost certainly, planned to kill him. “Don’t worry about it.”

 The wrappers were from convenience store food—off-brand jelly rolls, as if there was a brand version. 99-cent cinnamon rolls. The plastic stuck with the thick sugar slime; it crunched and crackled under his fingers as he helped her stuff plastic wrappers into a grocery bag.

 “All that time eating only the finest must have been getting to you,” he said.

 Her eyes flicked to his and she seemed on the verge of saying something sharp, something sad, before thinking better of it. “They say that you never can change all the way.”

 “Well,” he said, taking his seat. “That is disappointing.”

 Will gave her directions, but instead of starting the car she twisted to reach into the back seat, and he leaned away to make room for her. It might have been the exaggerated way he did so that made her smile so, as she handed a wrapped cinnamon roll to him.

 “Keep it away from the dog, anyway,” she said, and he smiled and unwrapped it.

 He cannot help but look back as they leave. His house behind him, in the dying light, was like a sinking ship he is not sad at all to leave. It felt like someone else’s house already.

 As they drove, Clarice sang, gently and badly, to decades-old songs on the radio. He ate his awful pastry. The setting sun shone in their eyes, and Will Graham smiled.

 His contingency plan for the dog was a little local kid he had met on the beach a few years back who lived a few neighbourhoods away, who really had loved his dog. He had gotten to know the kid’s mother over the years (and almost better, but had thought better of it in the end; intimacy choked him now) and told them that should he ever up and move one day, which was very possible, then he wanted her son Jacob to have him, if that was all right.

 Jacob answered the door himself, but was soon joined by his mother. The kid hugged him thank you and then Will was being smiled at by the mom in the doorframe; she waved off his offer of a (good deal) of money for care, so he just handed it to the kid. The mother looked beyond to the car behind; a moment of false understanding, and clarity and relief.As for Will though, the back of his neck burned; he felt Starling’s—Clarice’s—cool eyes taking the whole scene in.

 Lives that could have been and people he could have been and could have been tied to, all gone now.

 The last link to any old life he had gone, he rejoined Clarice in the car.

 The drive to the hotel, without the dog as a buffer, was more loaded, more awkward. He focused on the scenery as they drove.This part of Florida at night was a muggy buzzing watercolour world, with the slur of the ocean giving way to the slur of traffic.

 It would all be over soon, he thought, almost certainly, this waiting. This wanting.

 She filled the silence, though, drawing him back to the present. She asked him about fishing to the way to the hotel; said she had only ever caught river trout. And mostly they talked of that, and innocuous FBI things, etc.

 She was easy to get along with, and a part of him hated her for it. Compassionate and clever and steely, and—and _straightforward_. That’s what she was, that he wasn’t, he reflected. Able to not be self-conscious. Or at least pretend that she wasn’t. He thought of Hannibal. He always did.He thought of Hannibal and her, the one that Hannibal wanted. Hannibal’s teeth and mouth at her neck, her breast, her belly and cunt. The person Hannibal chose, instead of him.

 This unassuming person.

 But Clarice was saying his name, and he snapped back to reality.

 “Graham,” she said, like they were both working again.

 “Sorry. What’s that?”

 Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “I just hope you know. It was never me over you.”

 He inhaled, slow, and exhaled. He must never forget, he remembered, how bright she was. How, unlike him, she felt for the victim and not the killer, finding Buffalo Bill from seeing his victim’s chipped and tacky glitter nail polish—and what was he but a victim, found drowned in a sea of whiskey and self-pity and saltwater?

 “No,” he said, his face twisting. “Just instead.”

 She looked at him just a moment too long. “Well, we’re neither of us his now.”

 “And _don’t you think_ he will have something to say about _that_?”— he could feel himself, struggling to get out the words, emphasising the wrong ones, sounding sharper then he intended. Like he was tentatively removing some kind of hook from his tongue.

 “I don’t care,” she said.

 They sat in quiet; the radio DJ introduced a new song.

 “Oh hold on,” she said, turning up the volume dial. “I love this song.”

 She did not sing, now.

 

***

 

Clarice’s hotel was more of a motel. A place that took cash, no doubt. She had asked him on the drive if he was ok with just keeping the one room, at least for tonight, to limit the contact with any staff. There were two beds, she assured him, and she was an easy roommate—but Will had already agreed.

He would miss, he knew, the low wet heat and tawdry neon of the Florida nights off the main roads. He would not miss, however, the insides of these motels, which were pretty much the same anywhere—two indifferently comfortable beds with badly patterned bedspreads. A large box of a television. A chipped bathroom mirror. At least everything was clean. 

 The initial plan was, Clarice said, that she’d contact Hannibal and feel out how he’d like to proceed. She was ok traveling with him, she guessed, and since the Hannibal and he had history she’d let the two of them decide what to do.

“Didn’t you have like a game plan, for after we talked?” Will prodded.

“I wasn’t going to decide what to do with you until I heard what you have to say,” she said, “and I didn’t want Hannibal involved in that.” She is not sorry or embarrassed about this. “And, Mr. Graham, I’m choosing to believe what you’ve told me in good faith. Seems the only person you really want to destroy is yourself.”

 (She is vicious, too.)

 That night as Clarice tried to make contact, Will was excited, he felt electric, after all these years—but he ends up unsatisfied as Clarice tries by phone (no answer) and email (no reply), leaving innocuous messages in both cases—something about a dog, he was indignant to notice. She finally suggested that they sleep, and he is surprised to find he falls almost instantly unconscious after the emotional exertion of the day (the year, the last ten years, the last twenty. Ever since Jack and Alana had entered his class together that day.)

 “This usual?” he asked, the next morning, after she takes out an ad in the newspaper. Something about honey…? Will didn’t grasp the codes they communicated in, and it made him feel curiously left out. Which could be why he had found himself almost aggressively uninterested in the particulars of their relationship.

 “Hmm?” She was holding her cell phone against her chest, looking out the one wide window at some opportunistic grackles hopping around in the parking lot, picking at the ground. Their heads shone iridescent in the sunlight.

“The, ah, _effort_ it’s taking?”

She looked back at him sitting up in his bed above the covers, and waited, with the blank pleasant look he is beginning to recognise as Clarice choosing her words very carefully, so as not to give into her first impolite impulse.

“Nope,” she answered.

 His face burned. He pretended to turn his attention back to the cheery daytime news program with the volume at a murmur, until Clarice strode over and turned the TV off, and leaned against the dresser it sat on to face him.

“Why don’t you try, Graham?” sheasked, nodding at her computer.She still clasped the phone to her chest. “He’s no doubt in some stupid little snit.”

 Will shook his head. “Won’t work.”

“You’ve contacted him before.”

“Yes, and no.”

Clarice waited. He will find that she does not take bait and she does not indulge; she is not as patient with his peccadilloes as Hannibal was. (She would smile at his dark jokes, at least, but only when she found them funny.)

“I wrote messages, but never sent them,” he explained.

“Hmm.” She tapped the phone against her collarbone, as she looks back out the window.

(He had remembered watching her on tv, remembered her shooting that gang woman, her strong stance. She was smaller, and softer, than she appeared then.)

Will leaned forward. “What _exactly_ did you say to him? When you left?”

Her lip is curled. “Said I’d take care of it. Like I said, I kept your name out of it.” She bit her lip. “I did mention Anselm.”

 Will was too busy imagining how that scene might have played out, to recognise the name. “Who?”

 “Oh, you know. The man you helped find us, so he could kill us.”

 “…That’s right. I’m sorry.”

 “Ha. Thanks.”

 “So you think Hannibal might be pursuing him, instead of catching up with us?”

 “I think it’s very possible.”

 “He does no doubt feel uninvited, and so it would be rude to crash.”

 “I agree. But this Anselm — I don’t suppose you’d have a contact number, or…?”

 Will did. Or rather, he had. He had tried to call after, after he realised with a sick lurch the pathetic and grasping thing he was doing. There had been no answer. The next day, it had been disconnected.

 “No,” he answered. “I don’t.”

 “Well,” she said, and sighed.“We’re two bright former FBI wonder kids. Let’s see if we can’t find him. And maybe find Hannibal on the way.”

 

***

 

During the days, Will and Clarice travel.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked, one morning, at breakfast at a diner. There had been no response to any of Clarice’s messages or attempts. “Is there anywhere you haven’t been, that you want to?”

 Clarice tentatively stepping into Hannibal’s role. Did he really invite such dominance? Perhaps it was never inherent to Hannibal’s nature; it was just him. Wasn’t it Clarice who had chased him down, the last time? Saved him, at the cost of her own life?

 “Ha. I haven’t been most places.”

 She smiled around a mouthful of eggs. “Didn’t go to like the Grand Canyon on family vacations?”

 He picked at his pancakes, studying them. “Never went any place. Just fishing. Just my dad and me. You?” But he knew already, he has read about her, he has tried to live inside her pale porcelain skull and skin.

 “Never went any place either.”

 “He likes us without connections, doesn’t he?”It was meant to link them.She gave a strange tight twitch of a smile, and turns away.She doesn’t say much more for the rest of the day, although she goes out of her way to be kind, which means she felt a stab of anger towards him.

 She always was so mercilessly fair, in all things. So ruthlessly kind.

 After that, she started making the decisions by herself.

 

***

 

Will finds himself hungrier and hungrier, for him. In the shadow of her presence, in blistering negative, was _Hannibal_.

  

***

 

During the evenings, she asks him what she remembers about the man who visited him. If there’s anything new—the money behind the kill. “Anselm” doesn’t seem to mean much. Neither did “Blackbird,” its translation.

 Will tries. He does. He knows the actual man came to him. He was younger than Will. He mentioned Abigail. He was intelligent, and scornful, and seemed to take some kind of triumph in Will’s presence. He had brought up Abigail.

 Will hadn’t much liked him.

 Will answered Clarice before she asked: Anselm didn’t give a reason he wanted them dead. Will had supplied all his own.

 “The more I think,” Will said, one night, both in their beds“the more I am sure Hannibal is after Anselm first.”

 “First, before us, you mean?” Clarice’s face is dark.

 “You never serve the main course first.”

 Clarice snorted. “Which one of us is the main course?”

 “Guess we’ll see.”

 

***

 

During the night, they listen to each other unable to sleep.

 Clarice reads; she writes and rips up slowly, methodically. He never sees any trace of the papers. If he makes a sound she goes silent; she must have thought he was sleeping.

 Will watches the TV on mute, and only drinks a little. He misses his fishing.

 But the sun always cuts through the curtains anyway, round the edges, like some hideously patterned eclipse. And it all starts again.

 

***

 

In the absence of him, was _her_. Her eyes a deepwater blue, often inscrutable, but they shone when she smiled. She was there when he wasn’t, pale and lush and warm, and close.

 And _close_.

 

***

 

“Starling,” he said, one morning, around his toothbrush as he checks his email. He knelt on his bed with his new laptop open.

 (They call each other Graham and Starling—even though it’s bad disguise hygiene, as she tells him. They don't stop. It is nice for both of them, he supposed, to feel that they were working again.)

 She looked up from her bed. He gestured to his computer screen. At his expression, she crawled over to join him.

 (They insist on two beds still, although it might be more easily remembered, she tells him too. If he had ran away with Hannibal, perhaps he would have thought the same way, he tells himself.)

 “Do you know who that is?” he asked, and pointed at the new message in his mailbox.

 Bedelia Du Maurier has written him. She invites him and his companion, Miss Starling, to discuss a matter of some importance.

 

***

 

It’s a day’s drive north to meet Bedelia’s summons. Clarice drove. They are already in the hills (blue and black rolling waves, at this time of night, this far out where properties practically had their own zip codes) before Will brought up Hannibal and Bedelia.

 “Did _he_ ever talk about her?” Will asked. “Their time together, I mean?”

 “Du Maurier? No. Not much. I think he liked the games they played together. Always daring each other. Strange power plays.I was more of a straight shooter, he said,” and she laughed. “ _Straight shooter_. Good lord.”

 Will let himself chuckle. “He really relished American slang, didn’t he?”

 “But never quite got the hang of it himself.” 

 "Not at _all_.” He smiled. It is the first time they have shared this kind of humour, of intimacy.

 Her smile faded. “Du Maurier, though—I know she was very, very clever. Very beautiful.”

 “Very dangerous. Also, she doesn’t—um.We’re not—”

 “Well, I pretty much figured y’all aren’t on great terms,” Clarice said, drily.

 Will slouched back in his seat. “Not at _all_ ,” he repeated.

 Du Maurier’s house was difficult to find, hidden in the hills. The structure itself was low and flat, and Will was reminded of some kind of ocean grotto, surrounded by forests of seaweed. He shook off the impression, and took the lead, knocking on the door. Starling hung back, almost demurely.

 His heart lurches as he hears locks turning.

 The Du Maurier who answers the door is _almost_ the one he remembers. An icy blonde woman, dressed in a conservatively cut but tightly fit blouse and jacket, and an uncharacteristically loosely fit skirt.But when she smiled it was still almost like a sneer, her lips pulled tight. “Mr. Graham. Agent Starling. Come in. Please.” She speaks as before, her eyes and expression disconnected from the pleasantries she recites. She is not particularly interested in whether the two buy her facade or not, but it is the principle of the thing.

 “Clarice, please,” Clarice smiled, and then Bedelia’s eyes narrowed with something like softness, something like pity.

 Will offered nothing but a nod.

 Bedelia lead them to a sitting room. Inside her house was the carefully frigid, subtly decadent decor he always imagined her having. He remembered her moving through space like silk through fingers, like ice sliding on velvet, but now there is a new clip in her glide, and he sees her left leg is not her own. It is smooth and almost silvery, he sees as she sits and crosses her false leg over the other one. There is wine and three glasses on the end table next to her.

 Clarice gently touched him to bring him back to the conversation.

 Bedelia regarded him, face jerking into a brief and honest sneer, before turning to pour the pink wine into the three glasses. “Have a drink,” she said. She has already had one, or three.

 Will always hated rosé. Too sickly, like sugared poison. “No, thank you.”

 Clarice covered for them, taking her offered glass, and Will’s. “Thank you, Dr. Du Maurier.”

 “Bedelia, please,” she murmured, and drank, gesturing them to do the same.

 Clarice took a seat on the small couch opposite the other woman, and sipped at her wine. Will joins her with less grace, and took his wine from Clarice’s hand. 

 Bedelia clinked her glass down, swallowed, and began. “I should say that I would have lived out what years remaina of my life quite happily having never spoken to either of you. But I have been contacted by Hannibal once more, and it seems that my leg was not enough. He wishes me to deliver a message to you. I wish to never encounter any of you ever again, and in doing so will be granted this.”

 "Looks like we were neither of us the last bride, Bedelia,” Will said into his glass. He felt Clarice stiffen.

 Bedelia grinned. “No. But perhaps you fancy you can take her place.” There is a hiss to her usually measured tone, and a cold interest in her blue eyes that did remind Will of Hannibal (a creature, Starling had said — was it her? — that lived on tears).

 “Anyway,” Clarice tried to interrupt, “Thank for taking the time to see us.”

 “I don’t think so,” Will answered Bedelia, and took a gulp of wine. (It was, annoyingly, actually very good.)“But I am sorry to see what’s become of you, Bedelia,” he continued. “You used to want to help—the part of you that didn’t so enjoy the pain of others.”

 “Goddammit it, Graham,” Clarice said, simply, to the room at large.

 “What’s become of me,” Du Maurier repeated, and licked her upper lip. “But what did you _become_ , Mr. Graham? A ruin.”

 “We’re getting distracted,” Clarice tried, again.

 “And you,” Bedelia said to her, “became a monster. And all of us killers.

 “I killed without any help from him, Doctor,” Clarice reminded her, gently.

 Bedelia smiled. “Of course you did. We all ate of the tree, all of our own volition.”

 “Did you eat it yourself, Bedelia?” Will spat, staring at her leg. He couldn’t help but be bitter, nasty, propelled by jealousy and spite and fear.

 Mostly fear. Fear that she escaped, and he wouldn’t. That she was whole and he was not. 

 (Which _she_ that he was thinking of, Bedelia or Clarice, he wasn’t clear. But other than her leg, Bedelia was unmarred. And other than her heart, so was Clarice.)

 (Only he had been gutted.)

 Bedelia’s only indication she had heard him was a twitch of her lips. She kept her gaze levelled at Clarice.“You see why I worried about being the last? Hannibal Lecter doesn’t devour what he loves no longer. That would show mercy. No, her leaves them half-eaten.”

 Will scoffed. “Clarice is—well, she’s fine. And I’m whole, at least, if not as _handsome_ as I once was.”

 Du Maurier’s cold blue gaze turns to him and it is like she is emerging from behind a veil, a medusa from her own mask of stone, all stinging venom and sharp teeth. “What of you is left at all? Empathetic response is more draining and leads to less helpful action than compassion. The same neurons fire, as if you were the person that you observe. I am not anxious to repeat my own experimentation. But it seems that _you are_.”

 She stopped to pour herself another glass.

 “And Clarice” she continued. “I wonder what has been gnawed away of you?

 Clarice laughed, politely. “I left him, not the other way around.”

“So did I. We have that in common, you and I. Or did he not tell you that?” Bedelia’s eyes flick over the other woman’s body. “I wonder what else we will have in common, someday.”

 Clarice fixed her gaze on the other woman. “Who can say? But what he did to you”—and she gestures to the false leg, trailing off.

 Will, worried, touched her arm. Clarice never avoided the unpleasant, even as she felt it, even as it pained her—she stands in the deluge, while Will is washed away and into, becoming a part of it.

 “ _Oh_ ,” Clarice said, suddenly, strangely. “Oh, I think I see.”She pulls her arm from Will, cocks her head a little. “You did it, didn’t you? You took your own leg, because you didn’t want him to do it for you.”

  _Oh_ , Will thinks, an echo, a reflection. _Of course._

 Bedelia smiles, a tight-lipped hint of a sneer. She drinks the rest of her glass, slow. “Control is learned and taken, and when even the wobble of an ankle in a sleek black pump betrays everything you cannot afford even that. You cannot keep even that.”

  _It’s her story she’s telling_ , Will thought, a _nd she got ahead of herself_.Hannibal must have never voiced his intentions to her; she attempted to stay two steps ahead of him, and in doing so, went one _step_ too far.To put it lightly.

 Will wondered what it had been like, amputating one’s own leg. Eating it, between changing bandages. Could you get to it all, alone, before it spoiled? Did she share it? Him and her, and her alone—moving through all ways to explore what it is to be another. To shape yourself, before you are shaped by another.

 Still, Will was polite enough—barely, he admits—not to ask (and, to be honest, he did not think he wanted the answers).

 Bedelia sighed. “I never was like either of you, you know. I am against type, in a way. I have not your compassion,” and she nodded to Clarice, “nor your empathy,” at Will. “I do have his curiosity. My pleasures, my appetites, are more cerebral than his. I wonder if we didn’t share an understanding that he didn’t share with either of you. In any case. Of the three of us, I am left to life the life I choose now, while all of yours will shortly end, I imagine.”

 She reached into a jacket pocket, and leaned to hand a folded message to Clarice. It is sealed with black wax. He notices Bedelia’s pale well-manicured fingers brushing over Clarice’s, and he feels a possessiveness he cannot name.

 Clarice unfolded it, and looked at her two companions. “I’ll read it aloud, if that’s all right?"

 Bedelia nodded. Will leaned forward, resting a hand on his knee.

 “ _My dearest former agents of justice_ ,” she read.

  _I do wish I could be there with you, now, enjoying Dr. Du Maurier’s company. She is as you know, a brilliant woman. Almost entirely self-made. And I wouldn’t have her any other way_ —ah goddammit, Hannibal, really?”

 “Go on,” Bedelia said. “I assure you, it doesn’t bother me.”

 Clarice nodded and continued.

 “ _I look forward to seeing you both very soon._

  _But until then, look behind you, my lambs. and there you will find the lives you didn’t choose and the secrets they hold, and what you must know before we meet again. In Egyptian mythology, the dead undertook a final journey before reaching the afterlife, called the Du’at. On this journey they met many spirits, for whom they had to have the right answers. At the end of the journey their heart was weighed, and if they were found wanting by that cold judge Anubis, the hearts were thrown to the monster Ammit to be devoured. If they were found to be the same weight as the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice, then they were reunited with their soul._

_I would suggest this is a useful metaphor, if either of you find yourselves again lacking perspective._

  _As further aid, I myself will be helping you tie up whatever ‘loose ends’_ —that’s in quotes, for some reason? sorry— _tie up whatever loose ends that you don’t._

  _I look forward to seeing you soon. Until then, look behind you; the design is clear. The bloom is off the rose and the cartographer’s hand rests, and I will sever those threads of fate that you will not._

  _Before you go, please raise your glass to my Bedelia, who outran even the devil. And then, a glass to yourselves, my remarkable boy, my exceptional girl, that we do not weigh one another’s hearts and find them wanting._

  _This has all gone on too long._

  _Yours affectionately,_

  _Hannibal Lecter,_ etc.”

 Clarice looked up.“A threat?”

 “I can’t imagine it is meant to be anything else,” Bedelia said, pouring the last of the bottle into her glass.

 Will put down his own glass. His extremities felt cold; his hands felt almost foreign as he ran his hands through his shaggy hair. “Yes, yes I would say so. We know too much. And we are causing too much trouble.”

 Clarice refolded the letter. “Not necessarily. It sounds like he’s pouting. It sounds like we’ll all have a chance to explain ourselves.”

 (Will only heard the old words, over— _remarkable boy. I do admire your courage. I think I’ll eat your heart_.)

 ( _Remarkable boy remarkable boy._ )

 “Unless he just is planning to eat us,” he said. “Hannibal’s threatened to eat my heart before.”

 Bedelia laughed, softly. “Oh Mr. Graham. Clarice. To eat the heart is all he has ever done. That is all he is good for. He makes a thing less than it was before, and all he does is transform it for his own enjoyment. To do otherwise would be love, and this he cannot feel.”

 Neither of the other spoke.

 “And now," Bedelia said, making to stand, “this is where you leave me.”

Will rose and reached out to help her to her feet. Bedelia took his hand—she had a cool, slim little hand, with fragile-feeling skin. Bedelia smiled strangely at him as she stood, and he could smell her perfume, of ozone and musk and flowers.

 “Let me walk you out,” she said.

 At the door, Clarice zipped up her jacket. “Thank you, Bedelia. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet under different circumstances.” Clarice reached out to take the other woman’s hand, holding it for a moment.

 A brief flash of sadness, of pain, on Bedelia’s face. “I would have preferred that, myself,” she said, slowly, seemingly shocked to realise that she meant it. And she opened the door to let the cold in.

 Clarice nodded and stepped out, but Will lingered in the doorway, turning back to Bedelia.

 “I—I hope—um. Forgive my rudeness,” he finally got out, not meeting her eyes. “In fact, I hope you will just—“ it was hard to say, his chest was tightening. “I hope you will forgive me, Bedelia. You helped me, once.”

 “Not enough then, or now.”Bedelia didn’t touch him, she didn’t smile, but she did lean against the wall in a moment of letting her guard down, which was the most human he had ever seen her. She looks very, very tired. “It never is enough, is it? For any of us. For all our skills, for all our scheming, for all our love, it is never enough to tip the scales.” 

 She closed her eyes and sighed, before regaining her composure, looking somewhat aghast and apologetic.

 “Goodbye, Will Graham. Do have a safe journey.”

 He stepped outside and the door closed behind them, leaving them both in the darkness and cold of the high-altitude nighttime.

 It was the first of the last of their goodbyes.

 

***

 

Clarice drove down through the hills. Will held the letter, reading, rereading. He feels dizzy at the ornate scrawl, the scent the heavy paper still held. He feels Hannibal so close now so close—the heavy lips and the sharp sharp teeth, and _death_ , and oblivion.

But Clarice was speaking to him.

 “Sorry?” he said.

 “What do you think?”

 Will blinked. “Of Du Maurier?”

 Clarice rolled down his window, letting in the cold night air. The paper in his hands fluttered. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”

 “Sorry. The letter.” He rolled his window back up. “Well, you’re the one who knew him most recently.”

 She clicked her tongue, thoughtful. “I think he is wanting to make sure we all meet soon. There sure were a lot of possessives, for my liking. My Bedelia. My remarkable boy. My girl.”

 “Not jealous?”

 “Wrong idea. I would prefer no possessives, not one.”

 “I, uh, don’t think Bedelia was pleased about that either.” He grinned a little at the memory.

 Clarice smiled ruefully at him, sparing a quick glance from the dark road. “A little late for that kind of thinking across the board, of course.”

 “I think for all of us—both of us,” Will said, “he was the only person who bothered to see us at all. And that makes us his.”

 The road twisted through switchbacks and long stretches without light. He braced himself against the door as she took hard a particularly sharp turn.

 “Made you his, maybe,” she said.

 Will felt a rush of unreasonable anger. She was so determined, wasn’t she, to see them as different. He the broken used thing, and her the victor with the spoils.

 “Made _me_ his, then. But maybe you’ll see it different, someday, Starling.” He paused. “I’ve followed your story, of course. How he set you free to become truly something exceptional, free from all the strictures of the FBI and the patriarchy and anything else you considered yourself bound by. Free to do what you thought was right. Free to shoot the farmer who kept you from the lambs.”

 She drew her lips tight, not looking from the road now. “You’re good at this, aren’t you? Maybe someday soon I’ll be rude enough to tell you what I think it was he did to you. Sorry, _for_ you.”

 Will grimaced. “But we know that, don’t we? _He left me half-eaten_.”

 She let his annoyance hang between them, chewing on it. “I can see what he saw in Bedelia,” she finally said, flatly.

 “And what about me?” he snapped, before he could stop himself.

 "Oh, well, that’s not my specialty, Mr. Graham. Not like it is yours.”

 “I thought you had a _special affinity for victims_.”

 “All right, then,” she agreed. Her voice was cool and calm, almost cheerful. “I think he liked the chance to know himself better. A way to know himself better.”

 He cringed. “Ouch,” he said.

 “Like I said, Mr Graham, not my specialty. And not my priority, really, right now.” She clicked her tongue again. “Look behind yourself, Clarice. Goddammit. He’s done this before but I doubt he’s talking about a storage unit this time.

 Will cocked his head. “Are you frightened?”

 “No. Maybe a little. Doesn’t matter, though.”

 She did not ask whether he was; he realized with a sick lurch that this was _kindness_ , to not make him lie.

 He was preoccupied his hurt and displeasure, and was not following her thoughtful murmurs: “Loose ends. Look behind you; the design is clear, and the cartographer’s hand rests… _FUCK_.”

 She swerved the car to a stop on the side of the road. The headlights hit trees and bled into the blackness around them. Her face was pale under the blue of the dashboard light.

 “Fuck fuck fuck,” she said, hitting the steering wheel in percussive rhythm to her words. “He means Ardelia.”

 “Ardelia?”

 “Ardelia Mapp. My old best friend. The only person I had. The only person…”

 And then it clicked for Will too.

 He took a shuddering breath.

 “Alana Bloom,” he murmured.

 “Who?”

 “Alana Bloom. She came first. Chronologically, I mean. He’s tried to kill her before. He’s threatened to do it since. Those are the loose ends, Starling, the only people we have other than him.”

 He reached to touch her arm.“We have to find Alana first, Starling,” he said, and he felt so distant and dreamy it was like hearing someone else speak.

 Clarice’s words were clipped and tense. “I know Bloom. I mean, I know of her. If I remember right, Bloom has a few billion dollars to shield her wife and her family. Ardelia just maybe has her service gun. We’re going to Ardelia’s first.Shit.” She typed furiously into her phone. “Ardelia ardelia where did I put your address— _there_.”

 She held the phone up to him; it had an address in Virginia.

 “OK. A day’s drive or so, maybe; we can both take shifts. That all right?” She put the car back into gear, and shot back onto the dark road.

 He looked at her for a long moment. The blind fury and caring and rage—she lit up the night.

 “Clarice,” he said, gently, using her first name on purpose, a kind of purr she might recall. “This is what he expects.”

 Clarice exhaled sharply. “I don’t care, _Will_.”

 Will sat back. With Clarice, it could seem like there was never a choice at all, even when she always offered him a way out. He wondered if she felt the same about her own path. He still felt his choices keenly, on the other hand. They scarred him still, while she seemed unmarred.

 “Go, then,” he said. “I’ll be with you.”

 When Will takes over some hours later, the sun is just rising into their eyes (brighter, cleaner, harsher through the cold air than the hazy Florida sunset). Clarice is at first wary of falling asleep, but Will pretends not to notice, just drawing down the sun guards until she drifts off.

 He keeps heading east, to Ardelia Mapp, or at least the woman who once was Ardelia, Clarice Starling’s best friend.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing is ever-expanding it seems, like a horrible Zeno’s paradox of a piece—and yet after years and countries traversed I still can’t let it sit unfinished. The whole thing sits mostly written on my computer; I just need to shine it up a little. There is not that much left, I tell myself hopefully. Thank you so much if you are still reading this at this point. I really do hope you enjoy it.


	8. The Duat, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot how well I explained this but just FYI: the Duat in Egyptian mythology is (among other things) the landscape the dead must traverse before their final judgment.

The Duat: Part II

 

Clarice had barely awoken when she was blearily insisting on driving again, asking him to stop on the shoulder of the road. Will managed to hold her off until he could steer them into a gas station where he bought them large cups of cheap coffee while she stopped in the bathroom to splash water in her face.

 The rest stop was like any rest stop in the cool empty morning—a bleak liminal space on the long asphalt road. The air was still wet and fresh with evaporated dew, against the chemical tang of gasoline and tar. He made her sit on the curb with him to drink their coffee; he knew if she got into the car she wouldn’t be able to just sit.

 “Thanks for driving,” she said. She stared at the space in front of her feet, holding the cup still. “God I feel shitty. I hate sleeping in cars.”

 “I used to think it was nice,” Will said. “Kind of cozy. Traveling while you dreamt, like you were hurtling through black and starry skies, trusting you will get to your destination.”

 She snorted. “Well, tell me how dreamy you feel after you wake up with a neck cramp and your eyes glued shut.”

 He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

 They sipped their coffee in silence. Will was getting old, he realised: the curb bit into his backside, cramping his back. He stretched. The passing traffic from the highway, some ways off, was a distant bruise of sound in the brightening air.

 “Have you considered calling her?” he asked, gently. “Letting her know you’re coming?”

 Clarice’s small frame was stiff and hunched, like she was trying to warm herself. Her hair was plastered in ringlets around her face, still wet from thebathroom sink.

 “No.” she finally answered. “I can’t. She might not be willing to see me. To listen.”

 It was, Will admitted, disingenuous of him to ask. He had not tried to contact Alana. She had made some gestures, over the years, but it had always been too painful and humiliating for him to keep up any kind of friendship. Will rather hoped it wouldn’t come to that, meeting her again. He hadn't even, like Clarice, send a card--much less an emerald ring, as she had given to her friend.

 “He wants us to say goodbye,” he said. “There is some catch we’re not seeing.”

 When Hannibal asked them to say their final goodbyes, he meant it, whatever form it might take.

 “I know,” she said. “But the risk of being wrong—if something were to happen to Ardelia, because I didn’t warn her—it’s not worth the triumph of being right that it’s some kind of trap.”

 Will raised his eyebrows. “Have you, ah, decided what you’re going to say?”

 “Not in the slightest,” she said, and downed the rest of her coffee all at once, and grimaced.

 

***

 

When they got there, it was raining heavily, great slaps of water against the windshield and the constant tock-tock of the wipers as Clarice leaned forward to check their destination.

 Ardelia lived in a low blue house, surrounded by trees and dark vegetation that blended in with the dusk and the rain. Yellow-lighted windows shone cheery and warm, at odds with the rest of the landscape.

 Clarice turned off the car, leaving them in the dark, with only the beating of the raindrops.

 “Part of me,” she murmured, both hands gripping the steering wheel as they both peered through the passenger window to get a better look, “always just imagined her in the last place I left her. In our house we had, drinking tea, laughing with me.”

 Looking at Clarice, Will felt a stab of something so desperately lonely and sad and unsure—he reached out and touched her shoulder. And she smiled at him, and looked so young that his heart broke.

 He tried to smile. “And she will always be there, in a way, loving you.”

 She nodded, took a deep breath, let it out through her teeth.“I won’t be long.”

 “I’ll come with you. Then I’ll know if something goes wrong. Or if he’s waiting.”

 “Shit. Right. OK. Well, let’s go before I think better of it.” Clarice jumped out of the car, trotting through the dense rain. He followed, a little more slowly. The drops that hit him were warm and heavy; it felt soothing rather than hostile. Cleansing, almost.

 Ardelia’s porch had potted flowers on it, little bursts of orange and yellow, neatly kept. Clarice knocked on the door, and waited.

 The door opened soon after, letting out all the yellow light pouring onto them.It was a little girl, about seven or eight, Will guessed, with her hair in braids. Behind her Will could see into the home, bright and clean and comfortable.

 He heard Clarice murmur something, a kind of low coo, and at the look of affection on her face realised the daughter must be the spitting image of the mother.

 The girl looked at them expectantly. “Hello,” she said.

 “Hi,”Clarice said. “My name’s Clarice. I’m friends with your mom.This is my friend Will. Is she at home?”

 “Yeah,” the girl said. “Hold on, I’ll—“

 “Who’s that, sweetie?” a woman’s voice called, and Will saw her walk into view—a dark-skinned woman Clarice’s age, with sparkling eyes and a warmth to her beauty that her friend lacked. She was dressed simply and casually in what looked to be blue pajama pants and a grey sweater.

 The woman saw them, and froze.“Come here, honey,” she said, reaching her hand out to beckon. Her daughter went to her, looking back at the pair with sudden uncertainty.

 “Hey, Ardelia,” Clarice called, softly.

 Ardelia turned to her daughter, and Will admired how instantly all the stress and tension melted from her as she spoke. “Will you do me a favor, sweetie, and wait in the game room with your dad while Mom’s friends are here? Tell him Mom said to stay up there, ok?”

 “Ok,” the girl agreed, obviously suspicious, and obeyed once more.

 Ardelia walked slowly to join them in the doorway, her eyes wet now with tears and her mouth turned down and tense.

 “Ardelia—“ Clarice started, a sob already in her voice. “I have to—“

 But with a gasping breath, Ardelia reached out to clutch Clarice tight to her. Will, discomfited, tried to fade from the door as best he could as both women tried and failed to hold back tears.

 Stupid of him to come along. This didn’t concern him.

 Happy reunions, really weren’t his thing. And he didn’t see one coming, either.

 Just the death nipping at their heels.

 “I worried you were dead,” Ardelia said.

 “I’m sorry,” Clarice said, muffled by her friend’s sweater. “I am so, so sorry.”

 Will let them embrace a moment more, then cleared his throat. “I’m sorry myself,” he said, realising immediately it was the wrong thing to say, plunging forward anyway out of panic. “Can we come in?”

 Ardelia pulled back, took in Will for the first time. She had regained her composure. Her gaze was just as implacable and steely as her friend’s, if not more so, and Will could easily see how the two had been the top in their class. They had the same brilliance, the same confidence. “Is it just you? You two, I mean.”

 The implication, of course, was clear.

 “ _Yes_ ,” Clarice said, “yes, of course.”

 Ardelia held Clarice’s gaze for a few seconds, until she seemed satisfied. She gestured them in, closing the door behind them.

 “Will Graham, am I right?” she said.

 He turned, tried to smile in what he profoundly hoped was a friendly and casual fashion. “Yes,” he said. “Call me Will, please.”

 “Oh sorry,” Clarice said, actually blushing. “Will, this is—“

 “Ardelia Mapp,” she said.

 “Clarice’s old friend,” Will added.

 “Used to be, anyway.”She sighed. “Do you need help?”

 “In a way. Can we talk?

 “Sure,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Sure. Well. Come on in and I’ll get you a drink.”

 She swept past them into the living room and they followed her, sitting on the couch where she gestured them to sit.

 The two sat politely while Ardelia worked. Upstairs, Will could hear a child’s voice, then a man’s, over the obnoxious low roar of television advertisements.

 Ardelia made two cups of ginger tea, the spice a bright tinge to the room, but handed a beer to Will.

 “You seem like you need one,” she said, and he nodded ruefully, relaxing at the small _swish_ and minor pain of unscrewing the cap.

 She sat across from them, leaned over, elbows on knees and cupping her tea which was steaming gently.

 “All right,” Ardelia said, finally. "I’m gonna let you talk. I’m gonna let you explain yourself. I’m gonna assume you know what you put me through, and that you are very, very sorry. And I assume you are going to tell me what you are doing here now, with him.”

 Clarice tried her best, telling a very truncated and streamlined story, leaving out exactly _why_ she left Hannibal, painting her journey instead as wanting to reclaim and old life, hers and his. She had not spoken to Hannibal since she had left him, which was true. She told her she had it under control, which was not true, and which chafed Will. This wasn’t time to play pretend.

 “So, you do need help,” Ardelia said. “That’s fine. It’s a little different at the Bureau now, then when you left—“

 Enough of this, he thought, playing old friends. He was beyond all that, and Starling was too, even if she didn’t know it yet. “We’re here to warn you,” said Will, and Clarice shot him a look at his abruptness. “We think maybe Hannibal may be, ah, wanting to pay you a visit.”

 “Fuck, Graham,” Clarice muttered.

 Ardelia sat up straight. “Why the fresh hell would he do that, Clarice? What have you been telling him?”

 At Ardelia’s panic, Will felt guilty. “I meant it—it’s because Clarice cares about—“

 “Shut up,” Clarice said.“We’re not sure he is,” she told Ardelia. “There’s just a possibility. One I wanted to let you know about, so maybe you could take some of your vacation time, or something.”

 “Ah. A _possibility_. Why? I didn’t tell anyone about what you—I didn’t tell anyone, that you went with him on your own volition. Or so it seemed. Fuck, Clarice. _Fuck_.”

 “I—I wanted to let you know. I wanted to make sure you weren’t worried about me.”

 “And that was supposed to do the trick? What happened to you? The Clarice I knew would never have done that. Did you change, or did I just not know you as well as I thought?”

 Clarice, both frustrated and miserable. “It’s—hard to explain. I know I left people unhappy.”

 “No. I mean, I’m the only one furious at you. Everyone else just thinks you’re dead.”

 “Please, forgive me if you can.”

 “They found Krendler—“

  She shifted in her seat. “I know how they found Krendler.” 

 “And then you were gone, and what was I supposed to think.”

 “I know, ‘Delia. I’m so sorry.”

 Ardelia chewed on her lip. “If he’s after us, after _you_ —I can help you, Clarice. You can come with us. He won’t be able to find you. And if he does, we can kill him.”

 “That’s what we’re planning, in our own way,” she said, nodding to Will.

 Will blanched. He hadn’t thought of it that—starkly.

 He tried to gauge if that’s what she really meant. Will had difficulty reading Clarice, feeling what was in her head and her heart. _Something you couldn’t play with, when she got older_ , Hannibal had said, to someone else, and she was older now.

 At her words, Ardelia relaxed, a little.

 “Let me help, Clarice,” she repeated.

 Clarice sat back, placing her tea on a coaster on the coffee table between them. “Your daughter is just beautiful, you know. I wish I could have—“

 “There’s time for all that,” the other woman said.

 “What—“ Clarice laughed. “Catch me up, on what’s happened since I’ve been gone.”

 And the two women began tentatively to reconnect, and Will saw Clarice wavering:

 And Will thought of something he hadn’t quite considered consciously before. Clarice could be lying. He always thought of them as on the same team, the same side, but she was more like Hannibal than he was in many ways and she could really just mean to take Hannibal away from both of them.

 He marvelled that she could consider doing that, even so cavalierly as to say it to her friend and seem like she meant it. To be free of Hannibal. To _reject_ him (like Will had, on the surface, anyway) but on some deep and complete level.

 It was infuriating. It was horrible—despair rose in him, and overwhelming and acid despondency, that she could make this leap, he couldn’t.That she could make every leap, he couldn’t.

 Well, he thought, he could do some things that she couldn’t.

 And he knew Hannibal better than her—at least, knew how petty and hurtful and vicious he was. Hannibal had always been uncompromising with Will while he had, in Will’s mind, favoured and protected Clarice.

 So that while Clarice knew what Hannibal was capable of, Will knew what Hannibal would not be able to resist.

 And if Clarice shared Hannibal’s vulgarity, Will shared his pettiness.

 All that, and the fact in the house under the ginger and flowers there was that faint smell, of metal and embers—and Will could feel Hannibal’s arms around him, pulling him down into delicious oblivion—

 He had been here.

“The message,” Will said, interrupting the women. “The emerald ring. Does Hannibal know you sent it, Starling?”

 “I…I think so,” she said. “We never talked about it.”

 He turned to Ardelia. “Can I see it? Do you still have it.”

 “Yeah,” Ardelia said.“Of course I do.”

 “You could have sold it,” Clarice told her.

 “Of course I couldn’t have,” she said, almost exasperated. “Be right back. Stay here, now.”

 Ardelia took more time than he thought might be normal, which left Clarice and Will in silence, both fuming in their own way.

 “Why do you want to see the ring?” she asked.

 “Just a feeling,” he said.

 Ardelia came back, her face blank. She held no ring, but a gun in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other.“Here,” she said, coldly, handing Clarice the paper. “This was in the box with the ring, she said, giving her the note.

 Clarice stared at it in her hands, pulled it open.

 The handwriting, the smell—

 " _Fuck,”_ Clarice muttered, let the note fall to her lap as if it had burned her.

 Will took it from her and opened it so they could both read it, silently.

  _My dear Ardelia,_

  _It is a pleasure to finally have a reason to speak with you, even in this indirect fashion. I know that you were and are very beloved to my own beloved girl, your love and friendship a precious gem to her. You were often present in her thoughts; I almost feel as if I know you myself._

  _And so I hope you will forgive my intrusion into your lovely home and your beautiful family. I hope you understand I mean it in the kindest way, when I say that I hope I will see none of you again._

  _I write now to give counsel. You are still young, and thus might lack a sense of proportion._

  _First, please forgive Clarice, if you feel she has trespassed against you, lest you remember your lovely gem as nothing but green glass, and give this VITRIOL in return._

  _And last, you might tell our warrior knight and her fisher king that it is through this green glass that the next stone to be turned is found. And if they do not find it, I will turn it for them._

  _Yours in friendship,_

  _Hannibal Lecter, MD_  

“He sure likes writing,” Clarice hissed.

 “What does that mean to you?” Will asked, before Clarice shot him a look of sheer anger.

 And Will realised exactly what it was he had done.

 “Did you put this there?” Ardelia said.

 “No.” Clarice admitted. “No, we didn’t.”

 Ardelia was trembling. “He’s been here. Hannibal fucking Lecter. In my house. With my _children_.”

 They said nothing. Will looked down. He should have thought the scenario out to its conclusion; but then again while he could always recreate crime scenes, he was little to no good at aftermath.

 “Because of you. You’re not after him; you’re trying to _reunite_.”

 “No,” Clarice said, but Ardelia shook her head and stood.She walked to the door, folding her arms and looking out the window. The gun stayed pointed down.

 “Last chance,” she said, turning back to them. “Stay here, Clarice. Don’t pursue him. Don’t pursue this. Don’t go back.We can help you. I can help you. Don’t feel you have to choose this, just because you’re scared.”

 She wasn’t scared, Will knew, but also knew enough to hold his tongue.

 Clarice stood. “I know, Ardelia.”

 “But?”

 “I can’t.” She took a shuddering breath in, and hugged her friend. “I can’t. I love you very much. I love you so much.”

 “I know, Clarice,” Ardelia said, and her face was so sad. “I want you to go now. Thank you for the warning, but I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m calling the Bureau as soon as you’re out of sight.”

 Clarice pulled away from her.

 There was nothing else to say. Their next words would the the final ones they shared.

 Will put down what remained of his beer, and joined Clarice.

 “Goodbye Ardelia,” Clarice said. Will nodded, almost a bow. He found it hard to meet her eyes.

 “Goodbye Clarice,” Ardelia said. “Goodbye Mr. Graham. Safe travels.”

 They walked out into the rain, which had gone cold now, and the door shut behind them.

 

***

 

The rain had let up, mostly. Clarice jogged to the car; he followed her, not wanting to meet her eyes.

 The minute he got in, she took off, before he’d even closed the door all the way.

 He doesn’t know where they are going. He doesn’t ask. 

 “You could have waited,” she finally spat. They were taking strange turns out of the neighbourhood, out and up and back to the main roads. She was driving exactly as fast as she was allowed to.

 “What?”

 “You figured out Hannibal had been there. We could have found that stupid note when she wasn’t at home. We could have.”

 “And turned her house inside out hoping we can find where she no doubt hid that keepsake?”

 “If Hannibal could find it, I could. She’s _my_ friend.”

 “Starling, we couldn’t have known what was in the letter.”

 Clarice laughed, an ugly cackle. “You know, Graham, I just bet, had we pooled our prodigious mental faculties, we could have figured out that it wasn’t going to be anything nice.”

 Her words were vicious and clipped and she didn’t even spare him a glance.

 “I wish—“she started.

 “What?”

 “Never mind. Never _fucking_ mind.”

 “I—I wish too, Clarice. Every day. Where even to start?”

 He was trying to be helpful.He saw the tears in her eyes, and Will remembered how very badly she wanted to do right, by everyone, especially the weakest. How cruelly Hannibal had pushed her to fight for herself instead of others—how she still only knew how to buy freedom with some measure of herself.

 The both of them—that was the only bargain they knew. How to purchase the lives of others with parts of themselves.

 What they have paid:

 Her mind and her body.

 His heart and his soul.

 All for him. All because of _him_.

 “Hannibal—“ Will started, uncertain how to phrase this without digging himself in further. “He knew this would be the way to take her away from you, Ardelia, worse than killing or hurting her. He’s goading you. Goading us.He wants us to seek him out. He wants to make certain of it, so we don’t slip away.”

 Clarice chewed on the words; she knew he was right and from the look on her face it galled her that she actually thought she could have anything so soft and kind as a friend, outside of Hannibal.

 “Us. Me and you.”

 “Not as romantic as Clarice and Hannibal, perhaps.”

 “You know, I miss you when you were just someone else’s bad memory.”

He had no response. She was retracing their last steps, he realised, when they hit the same speed bump too hard as they had coming in.

 “If it makes you feel better,” he said finally, quietly, adjusting his glasses from the impact, “she still very much loves you.”

 “How much I hurt her, then, should make me feel better.” She turned. “You just wanted us to leave, get out of there.Get to Hannibal. You were getting impatient.

 “I was feeling a sense of urgency, perhaps, but that’s—god, I’m afraid I’m just not very good at other people.”

 “Afraid,” Clarice said, testing it on her tongue. “Afraid. What are you afraid of, Will? That he won’t find you? That you’ll have to face freedom, all by yourself, with no one to feed off of?

 “You did pick up some traits from him, I see.”

 “No, I was always just like this.”

 “And what are you afraid of, Starling—that no one, not even yourself, will understand why you did what you did? Or that they might guess it was nothing but self-indulgence?"

 The way to hurt her, he knew, was her sense of justice and goodness. Will grinned horribly. “At least I didn’t know what he was, when I fucked him.”

 “Not my fault you were bad at your job,” she said.

 “Not my fault you were looking for a father.”

 Clarice abruptly pulled the car over.The sudden stop lurched him forward; the seatbelt jerked him back.

 “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Too far.”

 She laughed. “What’s too far, Will? I think we both passed that a long time ago. Besides, better we get this out now.”

 She did not smile.

 “What are we doing?”

 “Ardelia saw the fucking car,” she snapped. “Gotta go find me—us—a new one.Someone painted a price on theirs a few streets over. Gonna go offer him 3x the price and hopes he keeps it quiet.”

She reached back and pulled a wig out of its dedicated bag, putting it on, checking in the mirror. The rain had slowed further to a soft patter, and although Clarice used a mirror Will could see their reflections in the windshield—eerie mirror versions, with dark pits for eyes.

 What had become of them. What had they become.

 She shouldered her purse and opened the door. “Be right back,” she said, but handed him the keys before she got out. They felt heavy in his hands.

 Will laughed, nervous. “You, ah, planning to be gone long?”

 “Just in case,” she said. “But one thing Hannibal did teach me—can’t none of us stay like we want to.”

 “I—I’m sorry.I _am_ on your side, Clarice.”

 “I know, Will. I know.”

 She shut the door and he watched her walk away into the dark and turn the corner.

 And Will Graham was alone again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying to be much faster of a writer. I hope you are enjoying this still.
> 
> Writing the two of them together is a challenge, and I suppose a side effect of that is that conflict was inevitable. I hope I am doing them both justice.
> 
> The next chapter will be both POV, and then we'll switch to Clarice until the end, when it will (surprise!) be all three of them. (Until it isn't three of them, any more hahahahahaaaaaaa.)


	9. The Duat, Part 3: The way station on the way to the end of the world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will's memory palace, and Clarice's/

WILL GRAHAM

Will waited.

A rumble of faraway thunder; but no rain anymore. It was hard to tell how dark the clouds were anyway, with the sun all the way gone. Ahead of him was a curving street, turning into green where the streets crossed.

Will Graham waited in the car. _Like a dog_ , he thought, almost compulsively.  The car was dry and warm, and when he rolled the window down for air he could smell petrichor.

The suburb was quiet except for an erratic wind through trees. He could hear himself breathe; he could hear his heart beat.

Once or twice over the course of an hour, a car drove past on the low wide street and he slumped over, so as not to be seen. (Of course, no one was looking for _him_.)

 _Hour and four minutes_ , _now, she’s been gone._ Will wasn’t sure if he was even _meant_ to try to wait; if it had been him, he would have left permanently in a similar fashion. Easier that way, he thought, to leave things less final.

(She wasn’t him.)

But if he left, if he lifted himself over to the driver’s seat and turned the key and drove away—the only way he knew was back.

Will straightened. 

 _The only way was back_. He could maybe go there, in a way, and bring something valuable back for the both of them.

Hannibal had taught him certain ways of recalling information, even places and people that all those dark swells and tides of pain could tend to bury—what was called a memory palace, which was a lofty phrase for what he felt was such a strange and sorry place.

Will had not been to his memory palace in many, many years.

If he could go back there now, if he could find out something, anything, he would have something to offer when she returned. If she never returned—he’d have another way forward.

Will reached down to lean his seat back, and adjusted himself to be comfortable, hands entwined over his stomach (his scar).

He closed his eyes, and breathed, and breathed, and sank, and breathed.

 

***

 

Will started where he always started, in an autumn meadow, at the grass-and-pebble shore of a narrow dark river. A boat stood tied in front of him, a worn gondola-like vessel of unpainted cherry wood. The soft current of the black water cut gently around it.

He stepped in, and the boat sank and tilted with his added weight, and he leaned to pull up the tie. Obediently, the boat started drifting down the river. He remained standing; there was no steering device, save imagining where he wanted to go.

Ahead of him the river parted into a latticework of tributaries through what almost seemed like strange neighbourhoods — the whole place having the appearance of an uncertain and run-down and badly-architected version of Venice, with the rivers flowing through the buildings instead of around. The structures were all woven into the meadow, which became an impenetrable forest.

The boat ran straight and steady. It did not take long to reach the first buildings.

Will always had considered his ‘palace’ to be only nominally his; the structures were copied from his life and the lives of others in his continued curse of overactive empathy.  His old house, from childhood. Alana’s old office. The Hobbs house, where he could find any number of horrors (although nothing with Abigail; that was elsewhere.) The FBI building. The house his mother stood in front of, in his favourite remaining picture of her, where she is untroubled by the presence or existence of himself or his father, and she wears a yellow dress.

He does not like visiting any part, and hadn’t in some time. Perhaps that was why, Will was confused to note, the whole place seemed now overrun by the surrounding nature, slowly being swallowed up by the creeping plants and darting wildlife.

At least the river looked the same.

(The river, too, was its own extension, its own wing of the building—he could sink beneath it, and visit what was buried under water.

Abigail lies there, under the river, her hair floating in ribbons with the current, the blood pulsing from her neck waving in red ribbons and entwining with her long dark hair.

She mouths words when he visits her, her pale face twisted, her blue eyes dark.

He has not visited her in many years and he would not seek her now.)

Hannibal’s white _palais_ still dominated the centre of the landscape, run-down and overgrown now. As he sailed past it it entreated him, a waiting maw of marble and stone—an open wound still, a raw and aching old-bone hurt.

Back in the early days of their separation—too simple of a word, of course, for what felt more like rending or a flensing—Will had visited the grounds to pore over old events and bleed over old hurts.

That was before Clarice.

And even now, he realised, as he shifted to steer the boat past and away, Clarice had left her trace. At the far end of Hannibal’s, sprouting like a aberrant burst of mistletoe on a silver birch, a Quantico lobby was now attached, half-built. Through weeping branches he saw a small television playing, sputtering with static and a woman’s face, the shot of a gun, over and over, a burn searing a pale cheek, and her smiling and smiling and smiling.

He did not stop to parse it, instead leaning too hard to tilt his boat onto the narrowing river path that led to older parts.

What he sought lay further back.

Will sailed further, carried by the implacable current. Past a crumbling mall, a lighthouse, through an empty dog shelter and next to a skeletonised tall ship with pristine sails, to his old classroom, from when he taught at the FBI.

The eerie dusk-dawn light he sailed under permeated everywhere; there is not much change when he found the right tributary and steered the boat into through his old classroom.  The boat stopped as he stepped out onto the lecture floor and waited, although the water rushed on.

Will kept all his consulting-related ‘files’ in his old classroom. Amsel’s related information would be somewhere here.

He looked around, got his bearings. The lecture hall was more or less how he remembered it, with rich red woods and blue-grey upholstering, and his desk at the front.  Now, though, the place was grown over, the river occasionally overspilling its banks. Trees have pierced and penetrated, like antlers, the filing system and the seats, his desk and the projector screen. Birds flutter and flap and screech above him. They are small, and mostly black, or black-and-white, with red-streaked throats.

Amsel would be in one of the filing cabinets still remaining intact, instead of shot through with branches. He found the cabinet quickly, leaning back on the second row of chairs, covered in fallen leaves.

A yellow-eyed bird—Brewer’s blackbird, he noticed—stood on it, watched Will with a cocked head as he approached, and then fluttered away, pushing away leaves in his wake.

The bird had been standing on a stack of papers. Will brushed off the leaves and picked it up. It was dirty, scratched with tiny claw marks and errant raindrops.

It was also what he was looking for.

He read, avid.

But it seems to be just what he’s already told Clarice. Amsel seemed to be slightly younger than Will but older than Clarice. He smiled too much, with a new-penny-bright air. Will could see him scan and analyse his environment (which included Will) in quick flickers of absolute attention.

Will turned the page, to find a transcript of their first and only conversation.  Nothing novel here, except that Amsel told him he had been referred to Will “by an only-friend.” There was a watercolour of a flower over this, a parrot-lily in pencil and peach and blush.

At the time, Will had marked the strange construction, but had written it off as some kind of linguistic peccadillo. Now, he was not so sure.

He would have to ask Clarice…or, that was right—if he _got the chance_ , he’d have to ask Clarice.

On the last page, nothing but their goodbyes. On the back—

A scrawl across the page, in a sinuous and familiar script:

_Amsel: German, from “blackbird” a nickname for someone fond of singing, or an occupational name for a bird catcher._

Will sighed. _Well, whatever that_ —

The bird shrieked and fluttered around his head. He looked up.

Blackbirds, yes, fluttered above him.

But starlings, too, and shrikes, with their ruby throats.

What was his mind trying to tell him?

Will’s daze was shook by sudden and familiar footsteps coming from down the hall. He froze—these ghost footsteps were not unknown here, but he always ran from them. He did not want to see anyone who haunted him, usually.

A dark figure passed the door, with a hat.

“Jack?” Will called, but was only answered by retreating footsteps.

He felt a stab of _missing_ , of nostalgia—cold and lonely. He missed the time, brief as it was, when he could rely on Jack.

And so he followed, down the hall, opening the metal door at the end of the linoleum hallway.

Will stepped into the old FBI lab, all white and chrome. Jack Crawford is leaning on the counter, broad and warm and strong as ever, arms folded, looking at the body on the table, all under a sheet except for her head.

It was Bella, beautiful and strong Bella, looking nothing more than asleep.

Jack looked up at Will, nodding his head a little in acknowledgment.

There is another room in his ‘palace’, Will knows, where both Jack and Bella are alive and at Hannibal’s table.

There is another place, Will knows, where the both of them are dead, and that is the world both Will and Clarice and Hannibal inhabit now.

“I’m—I’m so sorry about Bella, Jack,” he stammered. He is not sure if he ever told his old boss, not to his face.

“You know,” Jack said, pointing and shaking his finger at Will, “that’s exactly what Hannibal told me.”

Will started apologising.

(He had gotten the news of Jack’s death from Alana, some time after it had happened. She had told him she had sent flowers to Zeller and Price; she couldn’t think of who else to send them to.

It had been peaceful, she had told him, flat-voiced. Just the stress of the last years, and the loss of his wife.)

“But I won’t hold that against you,” Jack interrupted him and smiled. “Come here, Will. What can I do for you?”

Will stepped gingerly to lean next to Jack, like they were still old friends.

“I’m sorry about—sorry about how we left things. I wish I could have found the strength to tell you how sorry I was,” Will said. “Am. I hope you knew I only ever tried to help.”

Jack shrugged. “We’ve been over this. I pushed you too hard, I guess. I saw the cracks, but ignored them.”

“But one thing I don’t understand—after what happened to me,  you _still sent Clarice to him_. Hannibal. _Even after you know what he was_.”

The words spilled out before Will could stop them, and anger surged that he did not know he held — and a strange protectiveness.

Jack had never met Clarice, when Will had known him. Shoot, Clarice must have been about Abigail’s age, when they all worked together.

Jack nodded thoughtfully as Will spoke, and sighed and looked away out the window (only had swirling black outside) before meeting Will’s eyes. Eye contact with Jack had always been hard—Jack was a strong personality, with pity in his dark eyes that hurt, sometimes.

“A fair point. I thought she was stronger than you were. That it was worth the risk.”

“One girl’s life for another?”

“More than that, Will.”

Will looked down. “She _was_ stronger, I guess.”

“Yeah. In a lot of ways. In a lot of ways she wasn’t.”

“I only ever reacted, didn’t I. I didn’t _act_ , like her.”

“That was your own strength, too.” The matter-of-fact tone, the slyness so well-hidden you could forget it was there—Will hadn’t realised how much he missed Jack.

They stood in silence for some minutes.

“Jack,” Will said, a crackle to his voice. “I am on what I think is my final journey. I feel I am waiting between two worlds.”

Jack nodded, closed his eyes briefly. “I felt that way too, after Bella died.”

“And now you are in that other world, though, with Bella.”

“And now I am there.”

Will took a breath. “Are you happy?”

Jack beamed a smile; it was like no expression Will had ever seen on that stern broad face.

“Yes, Will. Yes I am. What is death, but opening the door at the end of a long road, and going into the next room, where she waited to greet me?”

This conversation, this man, these assurances—weren’t real. But they seemed real, seemed strange and outside his own consciousness, and Will’s eyes clouded with tears.

He blinked them away, laughed awkwardly.

“Thank you, Jack, for everything. I don’t think I ever told you that, either. Maybe I’ll see you again soon.”

“Maybe,” the larger man said. “But you don’t know how this will end, Will. You were never very good at seeing that coming. Only what was already there, out of sight.”Will laughed, felt a tear burn its way down his cheek and lose itself in his scarring. “You got me there, I guess.  Got anything else for me?”

Jack went over to the table, picked up the sheet to expose Bella’s arm, and took her hand. “It’s nothing you want to hear, probably—just the same I always told you. Follow your heart; it leads to your killer. Or whatever it is that you seek. And say hello to Alana for me, when you see her.”  He turned his head. He was not smiling.  No, he looked sad, and old, and tired, in a way Will had never seen before.

“Goodbye Will.”

“Goodbye, Jack,” Will murmured, and the two men nodded to one another before Will left to walk back down the white hall.

It was not the hall he had left. Now there were flowers bursting from the walls, a thousand thousand curling erupting blooms of snow-white — and a small river, and his boat waiting, to take him back.

He stepped back in and floats down the long hall, which now seems to stretch on forever, into blankness.

What was waiting at the end of the long hall, he thought. What was waiting, at the end of this long path he and Clarice walked, this Duat, as Hannibal had said? Hannibal, in his cage and out, crossing thresholds, urging them both on still.

Jack’s words: _And what is death but stepping through a door, at the end of a long road?_

And Hannibal’s: _The afterlife waits after the weighing of your heart._

(Hannibal who never had a heart of his own, who ate the hearts of others instead. Who taught him how desire leaves us all starving still.)

As Will progressed the white of the hall and the too many flowers seemed to brighten, and brighten, and brighten—until they hurt, and he had to raise his arm to cover his eyes—

Only to start up in his seat in the car, shielding his eyes from the headlights of the car parking in front of his.

 

***

 

CLARICE STARLING

 

Clarice drove.

A rumble of faraway thunder; but no rain anymore. It was hard to tell how dark the clouds were anyway, with the sun all the way gone. Ahead of her was a straight street, turning into another street then a frontage road then a highway.

The car had been easy enough to acquire. An ugly purple thing that smelled of cigarette smoke and attempts to get rid of cigarette smoke, all for only ten thousand dollars or roughly five times what it was worth. It would have to do for now. She could get another one in a couple hundred miles.

But Clarice stopped the car at the curb on the end of the street, and gasped in a breath, and pulled off her wig. She scratched her fingers over her scalp to try to restore some blood flow and air to her brain.

Will Graham couldn’t be surprised that she would not return for him. She should have known he would have resented her, and he should have known that she was not one with patience for men who made their problems with her, her problem.

Still, though, she couldn’t help but think that leaving him in this way was cowardly rather than kind. Also still couldn’t help but think of her own tendency to carry a doomed thing along until it killed her too, and no matter what they would always be screaming.

_And wasn’t he just some little doomed lamb, some virtuous once-unspotted sacrifice?_

(But then again, wasn’t she? _What did I buy with my mind, my heart,_ she thought. _What did I buy with my body. What did I stave off, and did I become it instead?)_

She felt a lump in her throat all of a sudden, and choked it back with a curse.

 _Didn’t do to drive and cry_ , she thought, and pulled over to park a the curb, a respectable distance away from any house to quell any residents’ suspicion. She reached down to blindly feel for whatever godforsaken mechanism let the seat back.

After she found it and the seat clutched back with a sickening _chunk_ , Clarice lay her head back. That goddamned note Hannibal left at Ardelia’s still bothered her, and she had foolishly left it with Will (it had seemed to burn her fingers, after what it had done to her and Ardelia). If nothing else, she could file it away in her memory when it was still fresh.

She closed her eyes, and breathed, and floated, and breathed, and breathed.

 

***

 

Clarice was always excellent at following directions when she wanted to, and the most essential bones of her memory palace look much like Hannibal’s own — a grand structure, cribbed from masterpieces he enjoyed. But while Hannibal was an expert at reference and appreciation of the existing, Clarice was more creative, and her palace slowly had turned into a fantastic structure out of dreams, with spires and stables and clocktowers along with what she had loved of Appalachia.

She always felt a peace, when she was there. Mostly, and until recently, the sources of pain in the real world were only familiar sights there, and it comforted her to not have lost them entirely.

Since Clarice visited her palace often,  it was not difficult to find her old dorm room she had shared with Ardelia. In the drawer in the absent Ardelia’s nightstand drawer, lay the ring and the note. Clarice put the new note in the drawer, covering the ring.

To distract herself from her pain, from her despair, she pulls back to be calculating, sitting on her own old dorm bed covered with its cheap and awful and now much-missed blanket.

The word VITRIOL was in the note for a reason, in all caps, she thought. 

And it rang some distant bell, metaphorically. Hannibal had mentioned it before, or she had read about it, or both.

She left her dorm room to find it. First, she consulted her FBI training—some kind of chemical, wasn’t it, when it wasn’t a feeling? But the old rooms and halls and offices held nothing but case files and old ambitions. Instead, she eventually found herself reluctantly wandering into the rooms of the palace she shared with Hannibal.

 _Heaven knows_ _I’m feeling my own share of vitriol now._ , she thought, as she scanned the titles of books and monographs in the library (the shelf currently being filled had a run of airport-bought thrillers and magazines, which turned into the childhood favourites she had returned to when she was traveling with Will).

What had Du Maurier called him? _Self-righteous wretched twitchy little man_ , or something like that, and the thought made her guiltily smile. Hannibal seeing parts of himself reflected, is all he must have seen in Will. The version of a god creating man only to praise him, to be lesser than him. To make him in his own image.

There was nothing of Will in her, surely. They were nothing the same.

 _No._ These thoughts were unfair.

_If not untrue._

Hannibal overlapped the two of them but they did not overlap each other, that she could see.

One only had to look at his sorry end, and hers less so, chosen as much as anyone can choose these things, of her own free will.

 _Fuck, Clarice,_ she thought. _Don’t make your problem with him, his problem._

 Clarice thought to look in what she termed, to herself, the first treasure room. Here, she kept all the lovely things Hannibal introduced her to. It was done in crimsons and gold and peacock blues; it was too much, and she loved it. It lay next to another room, a mirrored version of this one in silver and marble and white agate, where she kept the second treasure room, where she kept lovely things she found on her own.

The treasure rooms were not so much composed as museums as banquets, with all the finery and scraps of poetry and music, and precious stones and beautiful fabrics both laid out on fine plates and as table dressing. The table it all lay on was a rich dark wood and stretched on for longer than any existing table could.

She laid her hand on the warm wood of the table. It was a mistake, she realised now, to link these treasures all in one place. It hurt, now.

But there was no time to feel sorry for herself. She began walking and scanning the table, looking for where she might have placed something like green glass.

After being fooled by a small painting once, an emerald twice, and jade several times, she finally found a nondescript bowl of what looked like crumbled green glass. She picked it up; it smelled of blood.

Iron sulphate? _What on earth?_

The bowl was labeled: VITRIOL / VITRIOLUM. Below the bowl, lay a small brass placard.

It informed her that the name, vitriol, came from the Latin vitriolus or “of glass”. That the meaning of bitter acidic sentiment came from its corrosive properties when heated.

And that the acronym V.I.T.R.I.O.L. stood for the Latin expression "Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem," which means "Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying (correcting or purifying) what you find there, you will discover the hidden stone. A similar phrase V.I.T.R.I.O.L.U.M. used in alchemical literature is formed by the Latin expression "Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam", which means "Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying you will find the hidden stone, which is the true medicine."

The hidden stone. The philosopher’s stone—transmutation. Transformation.

 _Of course_.

It always came down to transformation, with him. Of evolution. The one thing he could never achieve. He had not become, he said, nothing had happened to him. Only he had happened. And while he could enjoy, he could never change.

But she could. And, well, Will could.

And while Hannibal might propel the change, he could not direct it.

It may not go so badly for her after all, she mused.

“Agent Starling?” a voice called, from what seemed like far away, and Clarice almost dropped the bowl.

Jack Crawford.

She walked toward the voice, back to the FBI rooms.

Clarice found Crawford at his desk, where he had given her her very first assignment, all those years ago. He was the same as she remembered him, shrewd and fatherly and acting more distant than he ever really felt. A picture of his wife was on his desk; she was an utterly sophisticated woman.

When Clarice walked into his office, she felt all the years fall away, like she was again the child she was back then.

“Sit down,” he said, not looking up from his writing.  “How are you, Starling?”

She sat in the only available chair, rubbed her shoulder. “I don’t know, Agent Crawford.”

Crawford signed his name at the bottom of the page he worked on, large and looping, and then put his pen down and looked up.

She smiled at the warmth in his face.

“You’re here for a reason?” he asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Well, I’m happy you decided to drop in. I just talked to Will Graham, actually.”

She blinked, knit her brow. “Sorry?” She had talked to Crawford before, but he never referenced any interaction that she did not know about.

“He thinks I should have known better, after what happened to him, to turn around and do it to you, too.” Crawford spoke with humour and a smile, but there was a sad and dark undercurrent.

Clarice gave a tight smile. “Graham and I, we made our own choices, Agent Crawford. Just like everyone.”

“You were very different, you know,” he mused. “Different enough, I hoped. He was always happy to operate outside the system, but enjoyed being told what to do. You thrived under a challenge, but preferred your independence.”

“I suppose that’s right enough,” she said. Even in her head, she wanted to show Crawford respect. She didn’t blame him at all, for anything that had come her way.

He laced his fingers together, over the paperwork. “But you both always wanted to do right. And you would both sacrifice so much to do it. And you were both seduced by someone who utterly understood you. I suppose I can understand, on some level,” he said, and looked to the picture on his desk.

But Clarice knew it was only a polite lie, since they might not meet again, even in here.

“I know I can’t defend myself,” she said, leaning forward. “But I also…sir, I also don’t feel I have to. It didn’t feel wrong, to me, going with Hannibal Lecter. Still doesn’t. I am more than the common narratives would reduce me to.”

Crawford chuckled politely. “The best people usually are. Or the worst. The greatest, maybe. Even Hannibal can be a tremendous help when he wants.”

“Just a shame about the eating people,” she said, and then flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry. God.”

He laughed, genuinely this time. “Don’t worry. We’re past all that. I’m past all that.”

 _Far past_ , she knew, _in fact, on the other side of the veil._

They sat for a moment, in silence.

“I left him, you know,” Clarice said, and planned to leave it at that but then she blurted, “Hannibal. And I left Graham too, Agent Crawford. I said I’d help him, but I left him.”

Crawford nodded. “And that feels wrong to you. Leaving Will behind.”

She almost whispered. “It does. _It does_.”

Her former mentor took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You know, I don’t remember you ever needing much guidance from me to do the right thing. If anything, it was the other way around.”

She laughed. There were tears on her cheek, even in this place. “I sure wish you were still around, Agent Crawford.”

“Don’t begrudge an old man his freedom, Starling, just as I do not now begrudge you yours. I am proud of you, you know. Of both of you. No matter what happened.”

"Jack," she said, and her voice is quiet. “I don’t know how this will end. I don’t know what I’ll do."

“No,” he said. “Of course you don’t. No one does. Your choices, and what you judge to be right, still lies ahead of you.”

She nodded, and a tear plopped pathetically on her chest, and she laughed again.

“Trust yourself,” he said, and she nodded and smiled, looking back up at him, composed.

Jack Crawford then reached out her hand, as he had never done in life. He patted it, gruffly.

She could not speak.

“I am proud of you,” he repeated, “no matter what happens.”

“No matter what happens,” she echoed, and felt a freedom like few she had felt before. At only one time before in her life, in fact.

She squeezed his hand, as she never did in life, and opened her eyes to return to the world.

 

***

 

Will was still there, thank god, where she had left him — rather anticlimactically, even seemed to have had fallen asleep.

He was stirring by the time she had stepped out of her car to knock on his window. He rolled it down, still blinking.

“Come on, Graham,” she said, smiling. “Time to go.”

“I was almost certain you’d left me,” he said, rubbing his face.

“Wouldn’t have been right.”

He smiled.

Their few possessions were transferred quickly. Will didn’t say a word about the colour or smell of the car, which was strangely relieving to her, and they were soon on the road again.

They were not long on the dark highway, when Will shared what he had ‘remembered.’ He was strange and stilted about it. Clarice guessed that probably he had been keeping this information from her for some reason she didn’t know, since it meant nothing to her.

She shared her own ‘memory’, of the possible context of vitriol.

Will nodded. “OK. The philosopher’s stone.”

“Just a dig at how he’s transformed us, of course. To make us feel grateful and obligated, on this supremely fucked up scavenger hunt.”

"Hmm. I don’t know," he said. "I think it might be something else."  He looked out at the road, murmured to himself. "As above, so below. As before, so now."

"As me," Clarice said quietly, her stomach lurching, "so you.”

He smiled at her, wry.  “We’ll have to go to my old friend Alana Bloom as soon as we can. I have a few things to ask her.”

“I sure hope she’s in the states, or at least a place we can drive to.”

“She is, these days.  Start heading north.” He reached back to pull up the GPS and started setting it up. “I’ll start getting specifics on the GPS.”

“Can do. Also keep your eye out for a dealership once light hits. I’m looking to get out of this car as soon as we can.”

“ _Fine_ with me,” he smiled, punching in an address.

After they had long since left the city, Will spoke.

“Starling,” he said. “Did he really change us?” He sounded honestly curious; he sounded worried about what she might answer. “Would we remember if he did?”

“No,” she said, decisively. “No. But I do think he created circumstances in which we could more fully express our natures.”

“Too bad for him, I guess, if that means, when we see him again, that he won’t survive the encounter.” He darted a look at her, unsure.

“Yes,” she said. She grinned, showing too many teeth, and she saw fear flicker momentarily in his eyes. So she took his hand and kissed it, holding it to her lips as she answered. “ _Too bad.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway this was supposed to be about 1200 words and yet here we are. story of my life tbh.
> 
> (also i know that, disappointingly, memory palaces don't really work as the representations of the subconscious like as they are described in Hannibal and the TV series, but it sure is fun to pretend they do.)


	10. The Duat, Part IV: What's a pound of flesh among friends?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarice and Will reach the end of their journey, together.

 

At her request, they would be meeting Alana Bloom in what she called “my favourite restauranta reasonably vague distance from where I actually live’.

Will had finally gotten a hold of Alana on their drive north, in the evening. They were in the mountain ranges by that point, in cold thin air, and her voice faded in and out like she was speaking from another time. When she suggested the place, Will made a small noncommittal sound.

“I just think it would be nice if we could reclaim fine dining, all of us,” she explained. The volume on the phone was turned up, and Clarice could hear her. She had a bright and friendly voice.

“Fine by me,” Will said, but grimaced.

Alana laughed, and Clarice smiled, that her friend was so transparent. “You don’t want to,” Alana said. “I mean, it’s Seattle, it’s no big ordeal to just find a quiet coffee place.”

Will cringed. “No, no, not at all. It will, ah. It will be nice. I’ll just pick up a pair of pants that isn’t stained with bait or dog.”

“Probably a good idea anyway,” Alana had said. “OK. I’ll make the reservation.”

Will agreed, and said goodbye, and hung up the phone.

He was silent.

“I think we might have to stop at a store that sells men’s clothes,” he finally said.

“Fine by me,” Clarice said, and laughed at his dark look.

 

***

 

They got to the restaurant precisely on time; they didn't want to be seen as playing any intimidation games.

It was a lodge of glass and yellow light, warm wood and stone, built on a hill in such a way that it looked perched in the high dark branches of the Pacific Northwest.

Will was dressed more nicely than Clarice has ever seen him, which was not saying too much. He was visibly anxious; he moved and spoke in bursts, and he often brushed his hand over the marred side of his face.

He also looked very handsome, and she told him as much, and he blushed.

Alana was waiting for them at the bar with a tall glass of pale beer.  Her face lit into a too-bright smile when she saw the pair, and she approached them.  She was a small woman, even with her tall heels, in dark pants and a leather jacket, with her black and silver hair coiffed.

Clarice had seen Alana Bloom in the flesh once before, had attended a lecture by her, but that had been a decade ago. She hadn’t changed much that Clarice could see. Boyishly pretty still, clever and effervescent, a snow-white look with her dark hair, bright and pale skin and bright and pale blue eyes, and red red lips.

She pulled Will into an embrace when she saw him, murmuring quietly into his shoulder, almost rocking him in her arms. Will had tears in his eyes, as he murmured back. Clarice, feeling like an invader, stepped back and pretended to examine the bar.

A whole history there, and they were coming back together again now, pressed heart-to-heart.

“Clarice, right?”

Clarice turned; Alana was extending a hand. Her nails were beautifully done in a bright color.

She shook the other woman’s hand, and smiled. “That’s right. Clarice Starling.”

Alana cocked her head. The lights were low and yellow but still shone off her hair. “It’s interesting to meet you; I understand we have a lot in common.”

“Yes,” Clarice agreed, but at the other woman’s brittle smile, she decided not to mention the lecture. “The pleasure is mine. Will speaks very highly of you, of course.”

“That’s sweet of him. I’m afraid I’ve had to rely on external sources about you.” Alana looked thoughtful. “Not sure if I should feel more pity or more contempt for you.”

At this, Clarice relaxed. Displaying this kind of honesty, while still keeping the door open for compassion—this was a person she could understand, and like.

She smiled back, not offended. “I’m more familiar with contempt, but of course that’s up to you.”

“Ah, of course; you’re straightforward and charming. And dark-haired.” She turned to Will. “I guess that’s all of our types though, isn’t it—not just his.”

Will swallowed. “I, uh, think the host is waiting for us.”

A cheerful young man was waiting, who greeted “Dr. Bloom and her friends” and led them to their table—a good one, out of the way, by one of the wall-size windows.

“I don’t know what Will told you,” Clarice started, “ but we contacted you because—“

“Sorry,” Alana interrupted. “Let’s at least get one course down first, before business. I’ll need the energy.”

So Clarice waited for the first course to be over. It was a more delicate rendering of what seemed to Clarice to be basically a steakhouse salad. She and Will got a paired wine, while Alana had another beer.

Alana was good at conversation. She asked Clarice about Virginia, asked Will about Florida, asked about their drive. She was good at keeping the tone and content comfortable.

_At least at the start_ , Clarice thought.

Will kept stealing glances at Alana, whenever she wasn’t looking. If there were silences he would start to say something, only to think better of it, and take a drink instead.

Only once did Alana look sad at this, when the waiter’s arms were in the way removing dishes. Her front was down and her brave heart looked broken at what remained of her old friend Will Graham, and Clarice felt a singular and sudden stab of jealousy, of Will, of the love and protectiveness he inspired; she felt Hannibal’s urge to rip him to shreds.

_You covet what you see every day,_ she thought, rueful, and took a drink herself.

On cue, when the second dish arrived (shima aji sushi, with some kind of a root that looked like wood chippings and some kind of broth, and which was delicious) Alana dapped the napkin at her mouth and looked between the two of them.

“So,” she started. “Will told me a bit, about your scavenger hunt of death or whatever nonsense Lecter has you on.”

“Scavenger hunt of death. That’s one thing to call it,” Clarice said.

Will’s brows knit. “I didn’t call it that when I talked to—“

“I know, Will, don’t worry,” she assured him, having to stifle a hysterical burp of laughter. “I like it, anyway.” She turned back to Alana. “Well, that’s good you’re all up to speed. Seems he won’t meet with us till we run some errands for him. Although I know Will is happy to see you again, and I’m happy to actually meet you and not just hear you speak at the academy.”

Alana winked; she was not going to be distracted by flattery. “I’ve said it before, but Lecter is just kind of a big finicky cat. He likes to torture his food before he eats it. Sure am sorry the both of you got caught up in it.”

Will leaned forward. His fish was already gone. “But that’s why we’re here, Alana. We think you’re caught up in it too.”

Alana stared at him for one second. Clarice recognised the look from herself—she was choosing her words.

“I’ve said this before too, I think,” she said, a little slower as she tried to be gentle, to remove the venom from her mouth as she spoke each phrase. It was done with mixed success. “Hannibal Lecter is not _inevitable_. He’s not some force of nature. He’s not a god. Just a boring sort of selfish monster. A bratty cat, who brings you corpses, so surprised you don’t love them.”

“You didn’t want to meet us at your house,” Clarice said, also gently.

“Nope.” She speared the last of her fish with her fork, popped it in her mouth. “I may be pretty unimpressed with Lecter, but I’m not stupid.”

“Neither are we,” Clarice replied.

“Could have fooled me.”

“He contacted you, didn’t he?” Will said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re being a bit rude, and you always are when you’re worried. Plus,” Will shrugged, “he told us to see you and he’s contacted everyone else, so it’s not exactly a conclusion that took all my detecting skills, such as they are.”

Alana stared at him, waiting for the waiter to leave, before smiling. “He has, in fact.”

“How? Letter?”

Clarice furrowed her brow. “He doesn’t know where you are, I hope.”

“No. My wife and son are safe and will remain so.” She leaned in conspiratorially, resting on an elbow, and stage-whispered. “I have more money than him, and that can mean something sometimes.”

The waiter brought the next dish, and they paused while he explained it (a richly coloured mess of beets, sunflower, and honeycomb).

“It also means,” Alana started when the young man left, “that I could help you, if you wanted it. I’d love to do it.” She tipped her glass to Will. “The offer has always been there for you Will, as you know, and I’d even see clear to extending it to you too, Clarice,” and she tipped her glass to her, “since Will likes you so much.”

She drank. Will and Clarice looked at each other.

“As generous and kind as the offer is, you’re not the first one to make it,” Clarice said.

“Didn’t think I was. But I’m the best, I’m sure.”

“It’s…very complicated, Alana,” Will said.

“It really isn’t, Will. It never has been. But all right. If you change your mind, let me know.”

Will looked like he was struggling. “How—how did he contact you?”

Alana sighed. “Mailed a letter to the hospital I worked at last and they forwarded it.”

“What did it say?”

“Bunch of pretentious nonsense like always. He doesn’t seem to know our story together is done. Oh, a Flannery O’Connor quote.”

“Can we read it?”

“I burned it, so, no. Do either of you know what I’m supposed to do with this honeycomb? Maybe it’s more garnish than food—I’m so bad about accidentally eating garnishes—but I really love honey. I don’t want to be spitting out wax, though.”

Clarice tested a theory. When it worked, she reported, “I think you can just press it with the flat of your fork and let all the honey out?”

“Ah, okay, that makes sense.” Alana copied her. “Yes, that’s perfect.”

“Can you tell us what exactly it said?” Will asked. “Hannibal seems to think you have some last bit of information that we need.”

“He intimated as much to me, but I have no idea what he’s talking about. Hey, this is kind of fun,” she said, pressing on the comb. “The honey is great, too.”

“Nothing about someone named Amsel?” Will asked.

“No, no Amsel. I _skimmed_ it, to be honest. Who’s Amsel?”

“A bird-catcher,” Will said, looking closely at her.

“Birds? You’re not a bird, Will.”

“Starling is,” Will said, and Clarice looked sharply at him. “And…Abigail…” he had trouble saying her name, “Abigail _was_.”

"I don't think you ever knew what Abigail was, no matter how much you thought you loved her," Alana said, quietly, and Will winced.

Clarice stepped in. “Amsel is someone Will set on us and I tried to take care of myself, so Hannibal’s taken it all deeply personally for some reason.”

Alana pointed her fork at her.  “Now, _that_ sounds complicated.”

“If you didn’t mean to pass us on anything, why did you meet with both of us?” Clarice asked. She did not bother to keep the frustration out of her voice. It had been a very long drive, however pleasant the current company or surroundings or repast.

“I wanted to see how you were,” she said, simply. “I’m sorry if I got your hopes up. I did tell Will I didn’t think I could be helpful. I can tell you the quote, though.”

“Please,” Clarice said.

" _Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge._ "

“You know what it means?” Alana asked.

“That now, at the end, we all come together, our true selves?”

“Yeah, maybe. Also, that Hannibal Lecter is a pretentious asshole. Please kill him when you see him.”

“Maybe that’ll solve it,” Clarice countered, “I mean, we’d all be good, wouldn’t we, if there was someone there to shoot us all our lives.”

It was an awkward reference at best but Alana laughed; Will did not, and the conversation shifted to how Will could been from Florida solving grotesque murders without ever reading andy Southern Gothic fiction.

They went through four more courses (mostly meat), talking about nothing in particular. Clarice and Alana did most of the talking, with Clarice asking after her wife and son, and sharing memories of people they all had in common in the FBI.

And Clarice got a sense of her. Under Alana’s lustrous charm, a brittle anger, not coming from wrongs against herself—perhaps worry, over another?  She was honest and clever and insightful. A woman who would protect others, even from herself, if she thought it necessary.Alana was brave, Hannibal had told her. Just like her.

But unlike her, Clarice realised, not willing to bargain herself away.

They were finishing the duck and wild liquorice, with Will and Clarice enjoying a Pinot Noir (Will going through his drinks with a worrying speed) when Clarice realised what this meant.

“You’re protecting someone, aren’t you,” she said. “Not just your wife, or your son. Someone else.”

Alana sat up straighter. “Yes,” she drawled, “myself.”

Clarice’s eyes narrowed. “Forgive me, but I don’t think so. Someone else.”

Alana shrugged, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Will was looking at Clarice, confused. He was clever enough not to interrupt.

Alana was about to open her mouth, but then the waiter came with æbleskiver and yogurt and berries, which Alana cooed about while the young man was there.

“I love these,” she said, popping one of the spheres of dough in her mouth.

As the other woman chewed—it was larger and denser than she had perhaps realised— Clarice leaned forward. “We know what Hannibal is, Alana. Will and I do. Just like you.”

“The three of us know better than anyone, I think,” Will said quietly.

Clarice reached to her own face, to her scar. ‘He gave me this.” She reached to Will’s face, stroked the scarred side. “And him this.”

She didn’t say— _and he gave me my freedom too, in a way, although one doesn’t erase the other_.

“These are very small physical indications of the harm he’s able to do people. You know how well he gets into heads, and fools you.”

Alana grew paler, although she was still chewing so the effect was somewhat comical.

“We could really use your help, bringing this to a final conclusion,” Clarice pushed, her voice going low and urgent. “Help us end this. To break from this hedonist’s dream, once and for all. All of us—you, me, Will, whoever it is you think you’re protecting.”

Alana twisted her mouth in distaste, and Clarice felt a jolt of anger.

(This _person_ getting in her way, who thought she knew better. Who could retreat to her castle and her family.)

_(How do you manage your rage, Clarice?_ His voice in her head, cool like metal and smoke, always. _)_

She took a breath, and sat back.

Alana started to cut up her aebleskiver into smaller pieces. “It’s someone I’ve not talked to in about 18 years,” she said, still looking down. “Not for want of trying, either. This is both the woman I am trying to protect, and the one that can lead you to Amsel, and even perhaps Hannibal.”

“Who?” Clarice asked.

“Not important right now.”

“Eighteen years?” Will said.

“Yeah,” Alana said. “Before you woke up.”

And Clarice sees on his face that he is too embarrassed to ask her to specify further.

“You know, I think Hannibal doesn’t always understand people as well as he’d like to think he does. I’m thinking you don’t, either, that you are asking me this. To throw someone I care about to the wolves, again. To me, Clarice, you are just a sadder kind of wolf, because you knew better.”

“That’s not fair,” Will said. “You know what he can do, when he wants. Miriam, for example.”

Clarice held up a hand. “No, Will, it’s fair.”  She paused. “Alana, I’m not asking for you to understand. I’m asking for your help to end this.”

“I remember the letter a little, of course. Something about a final walk. A final journey. And at the end, we converge. Just like his stupid quote.”

Will broke the tension. “Look, even after we talked about it, I’m still not sure what that means.”

Both women laughed, and Clarice thought—how it all could have been different. How they all could have been friends, or more intimate than friends. One more thing, taken away from them, that would not be regained.

Clarice spoke. “It means that whatever meets, in the end, will do so violently.”

Alana nodded. “Sure. That’s one reading. It also could be the idea that a person in a violent situation reveals those aspects of his character that he will take with him into eternity.” She cocked her head. “What will you two take into eternity?”

“Who knows?” Clarice said. “But don’t be our judge now. That’s for the end of the journey. And don’t be hers. Let us all find our own ends.”

Alana gave them both a long sad look.

The last course arrived, a souffle and champagne, and the usual quiet while the waiter hovered over them, explaining the dish while they smiled.

“I suppose she can guard her own autonomy,” Alana mused.  She took one bite, and then put down her fork, with a clatter.

“Look,” Alana said. “I’ll give her a call. She knows Amsel; that much I know. It’ll be up to her what to do next. Give me your info; where you’ll be staying, where you can be reached. And I’ll let her know.”

Will wrote down the information, and handed it to Alana, who slipped it in her leather bag.

“You’re of course welcome to come with us, if you want,” Will said.

She pursed her lips. “Everything that rises must converge. But, oh, sweetheart—I don’t think you’re rising. You’re sinking. And I’m sorry to see it.” She closed her eyes, took a breath. “But I’m not surprised.”

Alana stood, adjusted her jacket, her hair. Her pale eyes shone. “Goodbye Will,” she said, and leaned to kiss his forehead. “I will miss you very much. And goodbye, Clarice,” she said, and reached to brush Clarice’s hair back in a surprisingly tender gesture. “I hope you find the end you are looking for.”

Then, she smiled. “You stay as long as you like and finish up; I got the tab.”

Waving off his protests and her thanks, she left, followed by her security, who had been waiting discreetly in the back all this time.

 

***

 

Will and Clarice were staying, this time, in a mid-range hotel. Comfortable clean rooms, reasonably priced.

Alana called Will a few hours later. The wine had started to fade, and Clarice had them both drinking water and tea.

As Will spoke, softly, sadly, Clarice looked out the window. A better view than the past places. Here she could see the trees, and the sky with the moon.

Somehow, for some reason, hearing Will’s quiet sad words to a woman he once and still loved, caused her heart to break. No—not quite break. She felt a strange gasping pull, a tension. A fishing line pulled too tight.

The moon outside seemed to blame; it was too large and monstrous tonight, pulling the tide of her way out.

Clarice took a deep shuddering breath, as quietly as she could.

_I miss you I miss you,_ she thought, like a heartbeat.

_I will miss him too,_ she realises, looking back at Will.

She could almost hear Hannibal’s voice, from somewhere maybe in the byzantine palace he inhabited in her mind—

_I am still there, you know, my dear one. As your reflection, Will. As the shadow thrown by your light, Clarice.  The space in between you._

She heard Will hang up, and turned, and hoped her face wasn’t flushed.

He looked sad, and solemn. “She said she gave the woman our information,” he told her. “Alana said the woman seemed interested; it should only be a matter of time, and we should wait.”

Clarice’s mind still reeling. _The space in between us. Me and him. What lay at the end of this journey, the weighing of the hearts. And surely they,, who had all given their hearts up and eaten one another’s in turn, would all be found wanting._

She sat down next to him, curled her knees up.

Looked at him, frank.

“If it came down to it,” she said, “would you kill him?”

Will breathed. “Yes. I think. It’s only fair; I let him kill me. Would you?”

“Yes,” she said.

A pause.

 

"Which one of us will kill him, if it comes down to it?"

"And, or, which one of us will he kill?"

“I won’t let him kill you," Will said, with conviction.

“I won’t let him kill me either,” she grinned.

He reached out for her—to just touch her, maybe—

She kissed him, first. Death haunts, and she wants some of the finery for herself, before there is nothing left.

But he kissed back, with almost a hum of relief.

Being with Hannibal, had felt like flying, soaring. When it didn’t hurt. He did not seek, necessarily, to hurt her, but when cracking a ribcage open, pain was inevitable. For the both of them. Her lips were as red with blood as his, when it came to one another.

Will was different.

He was tender, urgent; he pulled her in softly, a request instead of a demand, and she leaned in over him, to press herself against him.

She felt his warm scarred lips, the brush of his scruff, how he still tasted like sweet wine, and he goes down under the weight of her, pulling her even closer, wrapping his arms around her and he was very strong, she realised, and it felt so good to be against him, so good, and she moved against him, pressing her heart closer, as his hand moved behind her, around her, down, _yes_ —

She pulled back.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. Like he is the one who has gone too far, instead of her.

“No,” she said. “I am.”

She laid down next to him, instead, and stroked his cheek. He leaned into the caress, closing his eyes.

“What do you want from me?” Clarice murmured. “No—“ she amended. “What do you want for me?”

“Freedom,” Will said, without hesitation. “What do you want for me?”

He opened his eyes. She admired them, not for the first time—a luminous blue and green, like lagoons, like coves, like all the more exotically-named bodies of water she hadn’t seen and would never see now, except here.

“Peace.”

They hold each other, wrapped in each other’s arms, until they both fall asleep.

 

***

 

Two days they wait, hardly sleeping, but when they do, they do so together.

Clarice wakes up to a pale young woman in their room, leaning against the wall opposite the bed. She grabs her gun from her nightstand, but the woman throws her hands up.

“Not here to hurt you,” she said. “I’m your contact, Clarice.” 

The woman was taller than Clarice, and thin, with huge blue eyes and short dark hair, and a wide pale scar across her neck.  She was very pretty, and had the look of someone who had often been told she was “too smart for her own good.” And maybe, Clarice reflected, from the tense way she held herself, possibly prone to violence.

“What’s your name?” Clarice asked. Probably the only question she’d feel like answering.

No luck, though. The woman walked over to the other side of the bed, with a curiously avid look. “May I?” she said, nodding at Will.

“Um.” Clarice tightened her hold on the gun, although did not point it at her.

“Wake him up, I mean.”

“Oh.  Sure, go ahead. You know him?

“Mmm. Did once. He never knew me, though,” the woman said, smiling. There was resentment, sadness in her voice.

She shook him awake.

“Am I—am I dreaming?” he said, blearily, sitting up.  “Abigail?”

“Yes,” the woman said, sitting on the foot of the bed.

Will was silent, trying to process the information.

“Yes, I’m alive,” she said. “And I’m here to take you to Amsel.”

He rubbed his face in his hands. “Why didn’t Alana tell me? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

The woman sighed. “Proximity to you leads to problems for me. Looks like I’ll never be totally rid of well-meaning men.”

“Abigail, if you’re in trouble, if you—“

“I wish others wouldn’t be so certain about what is best for me,” she interrupted. “Even if it comes from love,” she acknowledged, more gently.

“How do you know Amsel?” Clarice asked.  Will had told her enough about Abigail, that she kicked herself for not guessing, especially when she saw the scar.

“Has Hannibal been in contact with you, or you with him—is that why—?” Will stammered.

Curiosity is its own kind of hunger, isn’t it?” was all she would say. “No, my life is not either of yours to know,” she said, when pressed. “Not now.”

She stood, and zipped up her jacket.

“All you need to know, is that I am fine, and more than fine.  I am here to say that I can take you the rest of the way.”

“Why now? Why at all?” Will asked, forlorn.

“Because it’s the end,” she said, sadly.

The two dressed and prepared. Abigail waited for them at the door.

“I’ll drive you up there, if you like,” she offered, offhand.

“I guess a ride home should not be our primary concern,” Will said, handing Clarice her gloves as she handed him his scarf.

“Your guess would be right.”

“Then yes, thank you, that would be nice,” Clarice said, slipping on her gloves.

Abigail nodded, and reached to open the front door, only to stop and look peculiarly at Clarice.

“I always wanted to meet you, you know,” she said, softly. “I think we might be exactly the same age. He has a thing for pretty little birds, doesn’t he?  Maybe in another life I could have been you. Fighting for light and truth. Maybe. With a different father.”

Will tried to smile. “You and Clarice have a lot in common, I think,” he said, which Clarice knew was meant as a compliment.

Abigail smiled, cold and bright, and Clarice could see how the two of them were the same, too.

“Hmm,” the other woman said. “I doubt it. Clarice Starling saves people, doesn’t she? But I’m a shrike. I don’t save people. I save them for later.”

“Cute,” Clarice said, nodding.

“Thanks. I worked that gem out on the way over here.”

“Abigail,” Will said, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me. Is someone making you do this?”

“No,” she smiled. “The other way round. But he’ll tell you more, I’m sure.”

Outside, it was cold, and their breath was curled smoke in front of their faces.

 

***

 

She drove them to a fine house, which in the dark looked all towers and angles, and which she unlocks with a series of keys, and guides them through the foyer. It is all dark, expect for a light coming from the end of a long hallway.

“This is where I leave you,” she whispered, squeezing them both on the shoulder. “Goodbye Will. I know you did your best. Goodbye Clarice. I know you did too.”

Will turned to say something, to try and embrace her, perhaps, but she had disappeared into the dark.

Clarice touched his shoulder. “Come on, Will,” she said.

He grabbed her hand, and together they walked towards the light at the end of the hall.

And she thought what she could have been, if it weren’t for Hannibal. What they all could have been and what they became. What they would all of them be, at the end.

_This journey through the underworld, this Duat, is almost done._

They walked in.

And Clarice’s heart leapt, and Will cried out.

“Hello,” Hannibal Lecter said, from his seat at the head of the table, “hello, former agent Starling, former special agent Graham.”

The surprise almost made her miss all the blood pooling on and dripping off the dark table, pit-pattering onto the marble floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good lord this took forever. at least we're on endgame now!! original fiction is taking over a bit but my goodness i want this done. i hope you enjoyed it!! i hope you will enjoy the rest of it!! <3 <3 <3


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